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THE  LAWS  OF  FRIENDSHIP 
HUMAN  AND  DIVINE 


OF  CALIF.   LIBRARY,   LOS  ANGELES 


emostheneb  . 
asiest  thing 

one's    self: 

shes  he 
true." 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK   •    BOSTON   •    CHICAGO 
ATLANTA  •    SAN   FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LIMITED 

LONDON   •    BOMBAY   •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  LTD. 

TORONTO 


The   Laws  of  Friendship 
Human  and  Divine 


BY 


gork 

THE  MACMILLAN   COMPANY 
1910 


AH  rifbtt  reserved 


COPYRIGHT,  1909, 
BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.    Published  March,  1909.    Reprinted 
April,  October,  December,  1909. 


Norfaoot)  $r«ss: 
Berwick  &  Smith  Co.,  Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


PREFACE 

One  questions  his  right  to  speak  on  this 
holy  theme  at  all.  One  should  have  lived 
and  suffered  and  achieved  much  to  have 
earned  that  right.  I  can  only  own  the 
presumption  and  speak  as  I  must. 

In  attempting  to  discuss  the  laws  of 
friendship,  human  and  divine,  before  a 
Haverford  College  audience,  in  that  region 
of  Friends,  where  Haver  ford's  own  Pro- 
fessor Jones  had  already  written  on  Social 
Law  in  the  Spiritual  World,  and  so  near  to 
the  place  where  Dr.  Trumbull  wrote  his 
Friendship,  the  Master  Passion,  I  might 
well  have  seemed  in  superlative  degree  to 
be  bringing  coals  to  Newcastle.  And  yet, 
I  felt  that  perhaps  the  attempt  was  not  less 
worth  making  on  these  accounts.  The 
greatest  questions  are  never  new;  we  can 
hardly  hope  for  more,  in  any  case,  than  the 
individual  outlook;  and  it  seemed  as  if  it 
might  not  be  without  interest  to  see  how 
the  central  contention  of  the  Friends  is 
viewed  by  one  quite  destitute  of  either 
Friend  ancestry  or  Friend  environment,  but 
brought  up,  nevertheless,  on  the  "doctrine 
of  benevolence." 

My  own  pupils  know,  too,  how  prone  I 
am  to  quote  Dr.  Edward  Everett  Hale's 

v 


2130644 


FRIENDSHIP 

saying  to  the  effect  that  the  best  part  of  a 
college  education  is  the  fellows  you  meet 
there;  and  how  firmly  I  believe  that  some 
of  the  most  permanent  and  valuable  and 
momentous  of  the  friendships  of  life  are 
formed  in  college.  College  students,  too, 
are  still  in  the  natural  friendship-making 
period  of  life.  My  theme,  thus,  seemed 
doubly  appropriate  to  a  student  audience. 

Moreover,  there  was  the  further  per- 
sonal reason,  that  in  responding  to  the 
invitation  to  give  these  Haverford  College 
Library  Lectures  I  could  hardly  help 
wishing  to  share  with  the  students  of 
Haverford,  in  my  single  opportunity  of 
addressing  them,  my  best — that  single 
thought  that  had  been,  perhaps,  the  most 
helpful  and  most  influential  in  all  my  own 
thinking  and  living,  the  conception  that 
unifies  and  simplifies  for  me  the  world  and 
life,  as  does  nothing  else. 

And  yet,  the  great  reason  for  my  theme 
was  simply  that,  after  all,  it  is  the  greatest 
possible  theme  for  any  audience  whatso- 
ever. For  the  problem  of  these  lectures, 
as  I  conceive  it,  and  as  I  understand  the 
Friends  everywhere  to  conceive  it — and  I 
envy  them  their  beautiful,  significant,  and 
vi 


PREFACE 

simple  name — is  not  the  problem  of  a  mere 
bit  of  life,  something  outside  the  main  rela- 
tions of  life — though  friendship  has  been 
often,  perhaps  usually,  treated  in  literature 
as  though  it  were  a  kind  of  side  issue — but 
it  is  rather  the  problem  of  the  whole  of  life. 

The  very  fact  that  the  problem  is  so 
significant  and  comprehensive  a  one,  and 
that  the  fundamental  thought  which  lies 
back  of  these  lectures  has  long  been  for  me 
a  kind  of  ruling  conception,  makes  it  inevit- 
able that  I  should  be  dealing  here  with 
themes  that  I  have  already  partially  treated 
elsewhere.  I  refer  especially  to  Chapter 
XI  of  my  Reconstruction  in  Theology,  and 
to  a  part  of  my  Letters  to  Sunday  School 
Teachers.  My  readers  should  be  fairly 
warned  of  the  recurrence  of  the  general  line 
of  thought  of  those  portions  of  my  previous 
writing. 

But  I  have  taken  advantage  of  these 
lectures  to  do  what  I  had  long  wished  to 
do,  and  what  I  believed  deserved  to  be 
done — to  work  out  in  a  more  thorough- 
going way,  and  with  somewhat  ampler 
illustration,  this  conception  of  life  and  of 
religion  as  friendship,  and  to  disclose,  if  I 
might,  its  great  fundamental  laws.  My 

vii 


FRIENDSHIP 

own  conviction  is  that  no  other  analogy  of 
the  religious  life  has  so  much  to  contribute 
to  our  religious  thinking  and  living;  and 
that,  at  the  same  time,  it  is  in  the  light  of 
the  likeness  of  the  human  and  the  divine 
friendships  that  our  human  friendships 
take  on  their  true  glory.  I  have,  therefore, 
cherished  the  hope  that  this  little  book 
might  help  some  to  a  richer  and  also  to  a 
more  unified  life  in  both  the  relation  to 
God  and  the  relation  to  men.  For  the 
human  relation  suffers  as  really  as  the 
divine  from  failure  to  heed  its  fundamental 
laws. 

The  lecture  form  has  been  abandoned, 
as  not  best  adapted  to  the  development  of 
the  theme,  There  was  the  greater  reason 
for  this,  since  two  of  the  lectures  were  given 
without  manuscript,  and  since  considerable 
material  has  been  added.  I  greatly  regret 
that  the  preparation  of  these  lectures  for 
the  press  has  been  so  long,  though  un- 
avoidably, delayed. 

HENRY  CHURCHILL  KING. 
OBERLIN  COLLEGE, 
January,  1909. 


Vlll 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface v 

INTRODUCTION 

I.     Friendship,  the  Problem  o^  Life 3 

II.  The   Laws   of   Friendship,   the   Laws   of 

the   Spiritual   Life 7 

PART  I 

ESTABLISHING  THE  FRIENDSHIP 
INTEGRITY,  BREADTH,  AND  DEPTH  OF  PERSONALITY 

III.  Significant  Personalities 19 

IV.  The  Purpose  to  be  a  True  Friend 22 

V.     Breadth   of   Personality 30 

VI.    Depth  of  Personality 37 

VII.    The  Duty  of  Growth 42 

DEEP  COMMUNITY  OF  INTERESTS 

VIII.     Community  in  Large  not  Small  Interests       47 
IX.     Abiding  Relations  with  Men  and  God..       50 

MUTUAL  SELF-MANIFESTATION  AND  ANSWERING  TRUST 

X.     Mutual    Self-Manifestation 55 

XL     Answering   Trust    60 

XII.     Revelation  and  Trust  in  Relation  to  God       62 

MUTUAL  SELF- GIVING 

XIII.  The  Giving  of  the  Self 73 

XIV.  Self-Giving  in  the  Divine  Friendship...       77 

» 

IX 


CONTENTS 

FAGS 

PART  II 

DEEPENING  THE  FRIENDSHIP 
CHRISTIAN  STANDARDS 

XV.    The    Qualities    of   the   True    Friend,    as 

Seen  by  Christ 87 

XVI.    Paul's  Sketch  of  the  Friendly  Life. . 101 

FRIENDSHIP'S  MOODS 

XVII.    The  Self-Forgetful  Mood 117 

XVIII.    Reverence  for  the  Person 134 

FRIENDSHIP'S  WAYS 

XIX.    Expression 149 

XX.    Personal  Association  155 


INTRODUCTION 


I.     FRIENDSHIP,   THE   PROBLEM 
OF  LIFE 

[ROM  the  point  of  view  of 
Christ,  the  supreme  artist 
in  living,  our  problem  is 
the  central,  the  all-inclu- 
sive problem.  For  the 
problem  of  friendship  is 
the  problem  of  life  itself. 
He  who  has  learned  to  love — and  only 
he — has  learned  to  live.  This,  I  suppose, 
is  to  be  deliberately,  even  philosophically 
said.  For,  if  life  is  correspondence  to 
environment,  the  fulfilment  of  relations, 
certainly  our  relations  to  things  are  only 
secondary,  a  kind  of  mere  preliminary  to 
living;  while  our  relations  to  persons  alone 
are  primary.  Here  we  truly  live.  And 
this  needs  saying  in  this  age  of  physical 
science,  of  mechanism,  and  of  emphasis  on 
things. 

For  persons  are,  after  all,  the  most  cer- 
tain of  all  facts — no  philosophy  has  ever 
succeeded  in  seriously  questioning  them, 
though  philosophy  has  called  into  question 
everything  else.  Persons  are  for  us,  even 
more  manifestly,  the  most  important  facts, 
for  it  is  solely  in  the  personal  world  that 
there  lie  for  us  the  supreme  and  perennial 

3 


FRIENDSHIP 

sources  of  character,  of  influence,  and  of 
happiness  —  life's  greatest  gifts  and  achieve- 
ments. Character  and  influence  can  hardly 
be  conceivably  either  acquired  or  shown 
outside  of  personal  relations.  And  of  our 
happiness  it  is  not  only  true  that  friendship 
is  its  chief  source;  but  it  will  be  found  on 
reflection,  I  think,  that  even  that  happiness 
that  we  do  not  think  of  as  primarily  per- 
sonal at  all  in  its  origin,  like  enjoyment  of 
nature  or  art,  still  owes  a  chief  part  of  its 
charm  to  three  elements,  all  going  back  to 
personal  relations:  to  the  fact  that  in  it, 
whether  consciously  or  not,  we  are  coming 
into  the  revelation  of  the  personal  life  of 
another  —  God  or  man;  that  its  pleasure, 
as  Kant  long  ago  pointed  out,  can  be 
shared;  and  that  at  least  the  social  life 
forms  the  secure  background  for  it  all.1 

The  only  eternal  things,  too,  are  persons 
and  personal  relations.     They  abide  for- 
ever.    "Love  never  faileth."     Men  have 
an  instinctive  insight  here;  and  e^e 
who  ^^_qrce  jjjEgjcened  to  a 


_ 

selfish  love  cannot  help  having  a  reeling  of 
its  eternal  quality. 

So  that  to  be  a  true  friend  in  every  rela- 

1  Cf.  Lotze,  Microcosmus,  Vol.  II,  p.  16. 

4 


PROBLEM  OF  LIFE 

tlon  seems  to  be  the  sum  of  alL  It  is  hardly 
possible  to  put  more  into  the  record  of  any 
life  than  is  implied  in  the  quaintly  tender 
and  beautiful  epitaph  in  the  inner  court  of 
Westminster  Abbey:  "Jane  Lister — Dear 
Childe."  And  the  charge  of  treachery,  on 
the  other  hand,  is  the  most  damning  accusa- 
tion against  a  man  that  can  be  made. 

It  is  not  strange,  then,  that  Christ  finds 
the  eternal  life  simply  in  knowing  God. 
"This  is  life  eternal,  that  they  should  know 
thee  only  true  God,  and  him  whom 
thou  idst  send,  even  Jesus  Christ."  Here 
is  co?  .eived  a  personal  relation  to  hi  n,  who 
is  C  eatqr  and  Father  of  all  persons — a 
personal  relation,  thus,  of  which  it  is  to 
state  the  simple  truth  when  one  affirms :  It 
is  that  relation  which  gives  reality  and 
meaning  and  value  to  all  the  other  relations 
of  life — a  relation  so  fundamental,  that 
itself  once  set  right,  it  thereby  sets  all  the 
other  relations  right.  For  no  man  can  be 
a  true  child  of  the  Father  whom  Christ 
revealed,  and  not  be  a  true  orother  to 
every  other  child  of  God. 

The  conviction  of  the  love  of  God,  of  at 
least  possible  friendship  with  him,  is  abso- 
lutely fundamental  to  life.  "It  is  literally 

5 


FRIENDSHIP 

our  primal  hope.  For  all  our  arguments, 
in  defense  of  all  that  most  concerns  us,  rest 
finally  on  our  instinctive  immediate  assump- 
tion and  conviction,  that  the  world  is  an 
honest  world,  that  it  is  no  mockery  of  the 
best  in  us,  but  a  possible  sphere  of  rational, 
worthy,  joyous  attainment  and  living;  that 
is,  that  there  is  Love  at  the  heart  of  things, 
that  a  Father's  heart  beats  there. 

Our  problem  is,  thus,  the  one  great  hu: 
man  problem — individual  and  social;  the 
problem  of  ethics,  the  problem  of  religion, 
the  problem  of  life  itself.  From  the  Chris- 
tian viewpoint,  it  is  the  problem  of  the 
Golden  Rule,  of  "learning  to  live  the  life 
of  love,"  as  Paul  in  one  passage  puts  it,  of 
readiness  for  that  great  coming  civilization 
of  brotherly  men,  in  which  the  kingdom  of 
God  consists;  the  problem  of  Christ's  great 
commandment  of  love  to  God  and  men,  of 
the  life  of  the  child  of  the  Heavenly 
Father,  of  the  life  of  heaven.  For  what 
has  even  the  heavenly  life  itself  to  offer 
more  than  that  one  should  have  learned  to 
give  and  to  get  the  utmost  in  the  personal 
relations  in  which  he  stands  to  God  and 
men? 


II.  THE  LAWS  OF  FRIENDSHIP, 
THE  LAWS  OF  THE  SPIRITUAL 
LIFE 

It  is  a  distinctly  encouraging,  simplify- 
ing, and  unifying  note  that  is  coming  into 
our  sociological,  ethical,  and  theological 
writing,  in  harmony  with  the  fundamental 
spirit  of  the  Friends,  through  the  increas- 
ing, though  often  hidden,  recognition  of 
Christ's  and  Paul's  principle  of  love  as 
fulfilling  all  righteousness.1  And  great 
consequences  follow.  The  ethical  and  re- 
ligious form  one  unity.  One  principle,  only 
one,  runs  throughout  life.  The  same  qual- 
ities, the  same  conditions,  the  same  means 
— not  different — are  required  for  relation 
to  God  and  relation  to  men,  though  we 
have  been  singularly  slow  in  recognizing 
it. 

The  thought  of  friendship  becomes,  thus, 
the  key  to  the  highest  attainments  in  our 
direct  relation  to  God.  The  conditions  of 
a  deepening  acquaintance  with  God  are 
those  of  any  deepening  acquaintance.  All 
our  highest  religious  or  spiritual  aspira- 
tions have  here  their  full  conditions.  And 
it  will  be  more  useful,  more  rational,  and 

1  Cf.  Peabody,  Jesus  Christ  and  the  Christian  Char- 
acter, p.  121. 


FRIENDSHIP 

more  in  accordance  with  the  dominant  New 
Testament  usage,  to  think  of  greater  near- 
ness to  God,  or  of  "the  baptism  of  the 
Spirit,"  in  terms  of  a  deepening  friendship 
with  God.  And  we  shall  so  avoid  the 
perils  of  a  false  and  superstitious  mysti- 
cism, while  we  keep,  at  the  same  time,  the 
assurance,  the  steady  growth,  and  the  joy 
of  a  true  mysticism. 

It  should  not  be  forgotten  that,  in  mak- 
ing the  thought  of  friendship  the  key  to 
the  religious  life,  we  are  not  to  go  off  again 
into  a  false  subjectivism  which  ignores  the 
fact  that,  if  there  is  a  God  at  all,  he  has 
been  manifesting  himself  objectively  in  the 
world  and  in  history,  and  supremely  in 
Christ.  The  whole  possibility  of  our  going 
forward  hopefully  in  fulfilling  the  simple 
conditions  of  a  growing  friendship  with 
God,  assumes  his  love  as  already  made 
known  in  many  ways,  and  unmistakably  in 
Christ,  and  builds  continually  on  our  knowl- 
edge of  him  as  given  in  Christ.  "We  love 
because  he  first  loved  us."  We  are  seeking 
God  as  concretely  manifested,  and  most  of 
all  in  Christ,  no  God  of  our  own  mere 
reasonings  or  dreams  or  imaginations.  We 
find  the  real  God  in  the  real  world,  pre- 
8 


LAWS  OF  FRIENDSHIP 

eminently  in  the  historical  personality  of 
Christ.  And  we  make  progress  in  our 
acquaintance  with  God,  especially  as  the 
Spirit  "takes  the  things  of  Christ  and  shows 
them  unto  us." 

It  should,  of  course,  be  said  from  the 
start  that  God's  relation  to  us  is  certainly 
not  that  external  and  finite  relation  in 
which  our  friends  stand  to  us.  God  is  the 
very  source  of  our  being.  "In  him  we  live 
and  move  and  have  our  being."  He  is 
immanent  in  us.  His  personal  will  is 
expressed  in  our  moral  constitution.  We 
do  not  wish,  and  could  not  have,  that 
degree  or  kind  of  separation  from  God 
that  we  do  have  (though  here,  too,  within 
limits)  from  one  another.  But  the  per- 
sonal relation  to  God  is  only  the  more  close 
on  this  account,  not  the  less  real. 

We  know  any  friend  chiefly  by  some 
form  of  manifestation  in  act.  His  inner 
life,  as  inner,  is  hidden  from  us  as  really  as 
is  the  mind  of  God.  And  we  have  mani- 
festations of  God  in  like  manner,  and  from 
them  we  may  know  directly  his  purpose 
and  spirit,  very  much  as  we  may  know  the 
purpose  and  spirit  of  our  friend. 

Moreover,  it  is  well  worth  remembering 

9 


FRIENDSHIP 

that  most  of  the  best  in  even  our  human 
friendships  is  contributed  in  a  practically 
unconscious  way.  The  best  results  often 
of  a  deep  friendship  we  are  not  conscious 
of  at  the  time,  but  only  wake  up  to 
afterward  as  having  special  significance. 
Neither  at  the  time  of  their  contribution, 
nor  later  when  we  realize  our  debt,  are  we 
able  to  analyze  sharply  the  exact  points  of 
indebtedness  to  our  friend.  We  cannot 
draw  a  sharp  line  here  either  between  our 
friend's  thought  and  our  own. 

It  needs  also  to  be  borne  in  mind  that 
nowhere  in  our  communication  with  others, 
even  with  our  closest  friends,  is  there 
probably  a  direct  and  complete  transfer  of 
thought  from  one  mind  to  the  other.  The 
most  that  is  possible  is  that  my  friend 
should  think  his  own  thought  and  then  in 
some  way  try  to  manifest  that  thought. 
The  symbols  that  he  uses,  I  then,  in  turn, 
actively  interpret,  creating  another  thought 
in  my  own  mind.  This  created  thought  of 
mine  is  pretty  certainly  not  exactly  the 
thought  of  my  friend. 

In  other  words,  I  am  not  able,  in  even 
the  most  direct  human  relations,   to   dis- 
criminate   infallibly  between   that   in   my 
10 


LAWS  OF  FRIENDSHIP 

thought  which  is  original  and  that  which 
is  derived  from  my  friend.  Even  my 
friend's  body  cannot  secure  such  certain 
discrimination.  There  is  no  way  of  avoid- 
ing this  interpreting  element  even  in  human 
relations,  so  that  we  need  not  feel  dis- 
turbed that  we  find  it  in  relation  to  the 
divine. 

In  any  case,  to  make  concrete  application 
to  the  precise  point  in  question,  it  seems  to 
me  that  we  must  say  with  Herrmann,  "If 
God,  in  bringing  Christ  near  to  the  indi- 
vidual soul,  gives  to  that  soul  the  full  tid- 
ings of  what  is  in  God's  heart,  and  if  he 
thereby  gives  the  soul  clear  vision  and 
peace,  then  he  makes  that  soul  feel  his  own 
Almighty  power,  and  deals  with  such  a  soul 
in  the  most  direct  and  intimate  way  pos- 
sible. A  more  immediate  contact  of  the 
soul  cannot  be  conceived  or  wished  for, 
save  by  those  who  do  not  think  of  their 
God  as  a  Personal  Spirit  but  as  an  im- 
personal substance.  The  Personal  Spirit 
communes  with  us  through  manifestations 
of  his  inner  life,  and  when  he  consciously 
and  purposely  makes  us  feel  what  his  mind 
is,  then  we  feel  himself." 

The  contention  of  this  book  simply  is, 

ii 


FRIENDSHIP 

that  if  God  is  a  person  and  we  are  persons, 
then  our  relation  to  God  must  be  primarily 
a  personal  relation,  and  that  any  one  who 
will  go  forward  faithfully  fulfilling  the 
conditions  upon  which  any  personal  rela- 
tion may  deepen  will  find  his  relation  to 
God  deepening  in  like  manner.  The  fact 
of  the  personal  relation  will  verify  itself 
under  trial.  Appeal  may  be  made,  here, 
confidently  to  the  teaching,  example,  and 
experience  of  Christ.  Indeed,  the  entire 
analogy  of  the  "blood  covenant"  and  the 
"threshold  covenant,"  which  so  pervades 
the  ancient  religious  thought  of  the  world, 
and  which  Christ  himself  uses,  looks  to  a 
personal  relation  to  God  of  the  deepest  and 
most  intimate  sort. 

Now,  this  whole  thought  of  the  same- 
ness of  the  conditions  in  the  human  and  the 
divine  relations  means  nothing  less  than 
that  the  full  solution  of  individual  and 
social  and  religious  problems  alike  would 
be  found  in  the  establishment  everywhere 
of  true  friendships — the  ideal  toward  which 
every  relation  is  to  strive. 

What,  now,  does  such  a  true  friendship 
involve?  How  can  mutually  rewarding 
and  ideal  relations  of  person  to  person  be 
12 


LAWS  OF  FRIENDSHIP 

established,  maintained,  and  deepened? 
Mutually  rewarding,  I  say,  for  a  personal 
relation  in  which  the  love  is  all  on  one 
side — however  unselfish  and  beautiful  in 
itself  this  love  may  be — is  not  at  all  an 
ideal  relation,  not  merely  for  the  one  not 
loved,  but  even  more  for  the  one  not  loving. 

Henry  Drummond  made  his  greatest 
contribution  to  his  generation,  by  his  insist- 
ence that  there  is  law  in  the  spiritual  world. 
May  we  not  wisely  press  Drummond's 
insistence  and  its  scattered  illustrations 
much  further?  Can  we  not  be  certain — 
not,  indeed,  that  the  laws  of  the  natural 
and  the  spiritual  world  are  the  same,  for 
this  the  different  nature  of  the  elements 
involved  quite  forbids — but  that,  so  surely 
as  the  spiritual  world  is  everywhere  a  world 
of  personal  relations,  if  there  are  laws  in 
the  spiritual  world  at  all,  they  are  laws  of 
personal  relation — the  laws  of  a  deepening 
friendship. 

And  with  this  clear  insight,  thoroughly 
carried  out,  comes  a  great  gladdening  sense 
of  getting  at  life's  deepest  secret;  for  in  the 
knowledge  of  life's  fundamental  laws  there 
is  involved  freedom  and  power  of  self- 
control.  One  is  left  no  longer  to  grope  in 

13 


FRIENDSHIP 

the  dark  in  his  deepest  life,  religious  or 
ethical.  He  may  know  the  laws  and  their 
implied  conditions,  fulfil  those  conditions, 
and  count  confidently  on  results. 

Our  problem  becomes  thus  simply  this: 
What  are  the  fundamental  laws  of  the  per- 
sonal life?  And  that  is  to  ask,  What  are 
the  laws  of  friendship,  involved  in  the  very 
nature  of  man?  Upon  what  basis  must 
friendship,  human  and  divine,  be  estab- 
lished ?  Upon  what  conditions  maintained  ? 
By  what  motives  and  means  deepened  and 
strengthened  ?  This  is  our  problem. 

To  exactly  this  problem,  I  suppose, 
Christ  devoted  himself  in  all  his  teaching, 
and  most  definitely  and  systematically  in  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount,  particularly  in  the 
Beatitudes.  The  same  theme  engages 
Paul's  attention  in  that  priceless  bit  of  his 
writing,  the  thirteenth  of  First  Corinthians. 
And  modern  psychology  has  here  its  plain 
suggestions.  No  earnest  study  of  our 
theme  could  ignore  either  the  biblical  or 
the  psychological  material,  and  the  con- 
ditions of  this  lectureship  naturally  call  for 
consideration  of  both  elements. 


PART  I 

ESTABLISHING  THE 
FRIENDSHIP 


INTEGRITY,    BREADTH,    AND 
DEPTH  OF  PERSONALITY 


B 


III.     SIGNIFICANT    PERSONALI- 
TIES 

[ND,  first,  what  must  be  the 
basis  of  any  true  friend- 
ship, human  or  divine? 
How  is  an  ideal  relation- 
ship between  two  persons 
to  be  established?  What 
are  the  prerequisites? 
So  far  as  I  can  see,  the  basis  must  be 
fourfold:  integrity,  breadth,  and  depth  of 
personality;  some  deep  community  of  in- 
terests; mutual  self-revelation  and  answer- 
ing trust;  and  mutual  self-giving. 

The  significance  of  a  friendship  must 
depend,  first  of  all,  upon  the  significance 
of  the  persons  concerned.  Neither  can 
give  anything  essential  but  himself.  That 
self,  then,  if  one  seeks  a  friendship  of  real 
significance,  ought  to  be  the  best  possible. 
And  that  requires  initial  integrity  of  spirit 
and  clear  recognition  of  the  duty  of  ^teady 
culture  and  growth.  There  is,  then,  no' 
way  of  avoiding  the  demand  for  some 
breadth  and  depth  and  integrity  of  per- 
sonality for  any  friendship  that  is  to 
deserve  the  name.  The  addition  of  two 
ciphers  gives  no  significant  number.  After 
all,  in  strictness,  it  is  worth  remembering 

19 


FRIENDSHIP 

that  what  we  call  the  "relation"  has  no 
existence  of  its  own;  it  is  only  our  way  of 
stating  facts  that  hold  only  of  the  sole 
realities  in  the  case — the  personalities 
themselves.  If  the  friendship  is  to  be  sig- 
nificant, the  personalities  themselves  must 
be  significant,  that  is,  have  integrity, 
breadth,  and  depth.  Though  this  is  not 
to  be  asserted  as  if  any  of  these  qualities  of 
the  self  could  either  concretely  exist  or  be 
manifested  or  developed  in  isolation,  apart 
from  personal  relations. 

Nor  is  this  to  be  taken  as  justifying  the 
all  too  easy  spirit  of  exclusiveness,  or  what 
Bishop  Brent  calls  the  "weakness  for  inter- 
esting people."  For,  on  the  one  hand,  the 
man  next  you  is  interesting,  if  you  have  the 
wit  to  sound  him;  and  the  great  common 
qualities  of  men  are,  after  all,  the  most 
essential,  and  the  most  capable  of  continu- 
ous culture  and  growth.  The  veins  of  our 
private  idiosyncracies  are  both  less  precious 
and  are  sooner  worked  out.  The  deepest 
culture  is  never  the  culture  of  the  schools. 
And,  on  the  other  hand,  so  far  as  our  indi- 
vidualities are  more  permanent  and  signifi- 
cant, we  need  the  supplement  and  spur  of 
one  another's  individualities.  And  we  may 
20 


SIGNIFICANT  PERSONALITIES 

not  safely  spare  "one  of  these  least."  It 
is  more  than  probable  that  our  little  exclu- 
sive coterie,  of  which  we  are  so  proud, 
does  not  contain  all  we  need.  It  is  not, 
then,  in  any  exclusive  spirit  that  one  must 
make  the  first  prerequisite  of  a  worthy 
friendship,  integrity,  breadth,  and  depth 
of  personality. 


21 


IV.     THE  PURPOSE  TO  BE  A  TRUE 
FRIEND 

For,  first  of  all,  I  am  afraid  it  needs  to 
be  said,  in  order  to  a  friendship  worthy 
the  name,  there  must  be  vital  integrity  of 
spirit,  the  loving  purpose  itself,  the  simple 
intention  in  this  new  relation  to  be  a  good 
friend.  Where  this  is  lacking,  we  may 
call  the  relation  by  what  name  we  will, 
there  exists  only  a  thinly  veneered  selfish- 
ness. How  easily  men  and  women  talk 
of  love,  where  there  is  no  single  vestige  of 
it!  How  perpetually  love's  holy  name  is 
blasphemed,  while  its  praises  are  sung ! 

And  yet,  the  capacity  for  love  is  deep- 
laid  in  the  very  nature  of  man.1  In  body 
and  mind  he  is  made  for  personal  associa- 
tion, and  he  is  a  creature  baffled  of  his  end 
until  he  comes  into  unselfish  friendships. 
Even  the  body  of  man  bears  witness  here. 
Its  long  infancy,  its  peculiarly  revealing 
countenance,  its  capacity  for  work  that  ex- 
presses man's  purposes,  and  its  possibilities 
for  speech,  all  show  powers  of  self-mani- 
festation, and  so  of  association,  far  beyond 
the  brutes.  Let  the  inevitable  self-defeat- 
ing logic  of  a  pure  egoism  alone  indicate 
how  surely  in  mind,  too,  man  is  made  for 

1  Cf.  King,  Rational  Living,  pp.  228  ff.,  246  ff. 
22 


PURPOSE  TO  BE  A  TRUE  FRIEND 

personal  association.  And  intention  must 
match  capacity.  It  is,  thus,  laid  upon  man 
by  the  inescapable  logic  of  his  own  being 
that  he  must  bring  to  every  personal  rela- 
tion the  purpose  to  be  true  to  it. 

No  friendship,  then,  is  solidly  based,  in 
which  there  is  not  present  in  each  friend 
that  wholesome  integrity  of  spirit  that  can- 
not endure  that  performance  should  not  fit 
perception.  Integrity  demands  that  the 
sense  of  the  meaning  of  life  should  carry 
with  it  the  determination  to  live  it  out ;  that 
to  every  personal  relation  there  should  be 
brought  the  steadfast  purpose  to  be  true 
to  one's  own  highest  vision,  and  in  that 
light  to  be  true  to  one's  friend.  "This," 
Emerson  says — and  he  has  no  truer  word 
concerning  friendship — "this  is  the  office 
of  a  friend,  to  make  us  do  what  we  can." 
And  my  love,  therefore,  may  be  neither 
selfish  on  my  own  part,  nor  sentimentally 
short-sighted  for  my  friend.  For  the  man 
who  believes  that  only  love  is  true  life, 
must  know  well  that  no  true  love  fulfils 
itself  in  cultivating  selfishness  in  those 
loved. 

We  may  coddle  and  baby  and  weaken 
our  friends,  as  Miss  Cobbe  points  out,  in 

23 


FRIENDSHIP 

our  mistaken  anxiety  for  them.  Speaking 
of  the  duty  of  wives,  she  says  suggestively : 
"The  higher  moral  good  of  the  husband 
occupies  most  wives  comparatively  little; 
and  often  a  man  who  starts  with  a  great 
many  lofty  and  disinterested  aspirations 
deteriorates,  year  by  year,  in  a  deplorable 
manner  under  the  influence  of  a  sufficiently 
well-meaning  and  personally  conscientious 
wife.  If  you  ask,  How  can  this  be?  the 
answer  is  that,  the  wife's  affection  being  of 
a  poor  and  short-sighted  kind,  she  con- 
stantly urges  her  husband  to  think  of  him- 
self and  his  own  interests  rather  than  of 
the  persons  and  objects  for  which  he  was 
ready  to  sacrifice  himself.  'Do  not  go  on 
that  charitable  errand  to-day:  you  have 
caught  a  cold.  It  will  answer  as  well  to- 
morrow.' 'Do  not  invite  that  dull  old 
friend.'  'Do  not  join  that  tiresome  com- 
mittee.' 'Pray  take  a  long  holiday.'  'By 
all  means,  buy  yourself  a  new  hunter.'  'Do 
refrain  from  confessing  your  unorthodox 
opinions.'  This  kind  of  thing,  dropped 
every  day  like  the  lump  of  sugar  into  the 
breakfast  cup  of  tea,  in  the  end  produces 
a  real  constitutional  change  in  the  man's 
mind.  He  begins  to  think  himself,  first, 
24 


PURPOSE  TO  BE  A  TRUE  FRIEND 

somewhat  of  a  hero  when  he  goes  against 
such  sweet  counsel,  and  then  a  Quixote, 
and  then  a  fool.  And  a  curious  reciprocity 
is  also  established.  The  husband  cannot 
do  less  than  return  the  wife's  kindness  by 
begging  her  not  to  distress  and  tire  herself 
by  performing  any  duty  which  costs  a  little 
self-sacrifice ;  and  she  again  returns  the 
compliment,  and  so  on  and  so  on,  till  they 
nurse  each  other  into  complete  selfishness. 
I  am  sure  that  many  of  my  audience  must 
have  seen  this  exemplified.  But  if,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  wife  from  the  first  cherishes 
every  spark  of  generous  feeling  or  noble 
and  disinterested  ambition  in  her  husband, 
and  he,  in  his  turn,  encourages  her  in  every 
womanly  charity  and  good  deed,  how  they 
will  act  and  react  on  each  other  month 
after  month  and  year  after  year,  each 
growing  nobler,  and  loving  more  nobly, 
and  being  more  worthy  to  be  loved,  till 
their  sacred  and  blessed  union  brings  them 
together  to  the  very  gates  of  heaven! 
That  is  what  marriage  ought  to  be,  what 
it  is  to  a  few  choice  and  most  happy 
couples,  and  what  it  might  be  to  all."1 

Love  has  the  double  duty  of  promoting 

1  Duties  of  Women,  pp.  121-123. 

25 


FRIENDSHIP 

character  and  promoting  happiness.  And 
Kant  reminds  us  that,  while  we  are  in 
reality  primarily  responsible  for  our  own 
character  and  for  the  other's  happiness, 
we  are  quite  too  prone  to  reverse  this  re- 
lation and  regard  ourselves  as  primarily 
responsible  for  our  own  happiness  and 
our  friend's  character.  One  need  not  deny 
this  observation  of  Kant's;  still,  if  love  is 
the  chief  source  of  both  character  and 
happiness,  the  two  duties  finally  lie  inevit- 
ably together;  and  we  shall  seek  in  vain 
any  solid  and  permanent  happiness,  either 
for  ourselves  or  others,  apart  from  unself- 
ish love.  We  reason  badly,  therefore, 
when,  in  the  case  of  ourselves  or  our  chil- 
dren, we  think  of  rewarding  unselfish  serv- 
ice with  a  spell  of  selfishness.  Doubtless 
there  are  many  kinds  of  happiness,  and  the 
Father  rejoices  in  our  every  rightful  joy; 
but  he  would  not  have  us — and  we  would 
not  have  our  friends — satisfied  with  things 
and  sensations,  instead  of  persons  and 
friendships. 

We  are,  therefore,  to  "provoke  to  love," 

to  make  our  friends  "do  what  they  can," 

not  to  minister  continually  to  the  lower 

side.    And  no  friendship  can  grow  in  sig- 

26 


PURPOSE  TO  BE  A  TRUE  FRIEND 

nificance  and  satisfaction  where  this  is 
not  true.  The  proverb  that  the  way  to  a 
man's  heart  is  through  his  stomach,  can  be 
easily  overworked;  and  the  unconscious 
irony  of  the  old-fashioned  praise  of  a  man 
as  ua  good  provider"  is  a  rather  bitter 
reflection  on  the  greatness  of  his  lacks. 
Set  it  over  against  Peter's  fine  conception 
of  husband  and  wife,  as  "joint-heirs  of  the 
grace  of  life."  There  must  be  lightning 
in  every  true  love;  like  God  himself,  it  is 
a  "consuming  fire"  that  burns  up  the  dross 
in  the  one  loved.  The  deepest  laid  stone 
in  an  enduring  friendship  must  be  this  pur- 
pose to  love  truly,  to  be  the  friend  one 
ought  to  be,  to  make  the  friendship  of  such 
a  kind  that  it  shall  tend  to  bring  out  the 
absolute  best  in  each,  to  make  it  easier  for 
each  to  believe  in  truth,  in  God,  in  the 
spiritual  world.  Even  so  high  is  the  test 
of  friendship. 

And  all  this  has  its  counterpart  in  our 
relation  to  God. 

Upon  our  part,  any  right  relation  to  God 
requires  from  the  outset  this  integrity  of 
spirit — honest,  faithful  intention  to  be  true 
to  the  divine  friendship,  to  be  faithful  to 
our  best  vision  of  its  meaning — the  single- 

27 


FRIENDSHIP 

ness  of  eye  of  which  Christ  speaks.  And 
this  carries  with  it  the  persistent  purpose 
to  make  supreme  this  really  supreme  rela- 
tion of  life.  Only  so  shall  we  be  treating 
it  according  to  its  significance.  To  bring 
to  the  friendship  with  God,  thus,  this  ini- 
tial integrity  of  spirit,  involves  Christ's 
demand  to  make  the  relation  to  God  abso- 
lutely supreme  and  dominant.  And  this 
affects  inevitably  every  other  relation  of 
life.  For  just  as  I  cannot  keep  wholly  sat- 
isfying and  unclouded  my  personal  relation 
to  any  noble  friend,  while  I  am,  in  other 
relations,  perpetually  falling  below  what  I 
know  my  friend's  ideal  for  me  is;  so,  still 
more,  does  any  unclouded  relation  to  God 
call  for  a  faithful  and  reverent  fulfilment 
of  every  other  personal  relation.  So 
Christ  urges  leaving  the  gift  at  the  altar, 
to  be  first  reconciled  to  one's  brother. 

Upon  God's  part,  this  primary  condi- 
tion of  a  true  friendship  will  explain  much 
in  his  dealing  with  us.  As  he  wishes  that 
we  should  call  out  the  best  in  others,  so  he 
will  not  coddle  us,  but  will  be  a  "faithful 
Creator"  in  seeking  to  bring  us  to  our 
highest  possibilities.  His  "consuming  fire" 
is  an  evidence,  not  a  denial,  of  his  love. 
28 


PURPOSE  TO  BE  A  TRUE  FRIEND 

He  is  seeking  to  bring  out  in  us  the  image 
of  his  Son.  He  would  not  be  a  faithful 
friend  else.  Our  complaints  are  often  com- 
plaints of  the  very  faithfulness  of  God. 

In  all  this,  too,  the  inevitable  limitations 
of  the  human  drive  us  to  the  divine.  No 
human  friendship  can  quite  bring  the 
needed  insight  and  fidelity  of  the  perfect 
love.  Only  God  sees  our  full  need;  only 
God  can  hold  us  to  it.  There  is  no  short- 
sightedness or  weakness  in  him.  Here,  too, 
the  soul  is  made  for  God,  and  he  only  can 
fill  it. 


V.     BREADTH  OF  PERSONALITY 

For  a  significant  friendship,  besides  in- 
tegrity of  spirit,  there  must  be  breadth  of 
personality.  Man  is  a  many-sided  crea- 
ture— marked  off  from  the  animal  world, 
for  one  thing,  by  the  greater  multitude  of 
his  instincts,  and  the  multiplicity  of  his 
esthetic  and  practical  interests.1  This  is 
true  of  man  as  man.  It  is  both  a  psycho- 
logical and  a  philosophical  commonplace, 
but  its  suggestion  for  friendship  is  all  too 
little  heeded.  Any  refusal  by  a  man  to 
recognize  this  broad  complexity  of  his  life 
must  narrow  every  personal  relation.  For 
the  simple  fact  is,  that  the  man  who  means 
to  bring  a  large,  a  sane,  a  free,  or  an  influ- 
ential personality  to  his  friend,  must  have 
breadth  of  interests;  for  every  one  of  these 
qualities  depends  on  such  a  wide  range  of 
interests.  And  one  must  wish  the  same 
thing  for  his  friend  as  well.  There  must 
be  room  for  the  most  varied  inter-play  of 
mind  on  mind,  if  a  friendship  is  to  be  per- 
sistently interesting  and  stimulating. 

To  secure  such  a  store  of  permanent 
and  valuable  interests  has  been  truly  called 
one  of  the  main  aims  of  education;  it  is, 
not  less,  one  of  the  largest  natural  factors 

*Cf.  James,  Psychology,  Vol.  II,  pp.  343,  441. 
30 


BREADTH  OF  PERSONALITY 

in  a  rewarding  friendship.  The  man, 
therefore,  who  means  to  be  all  a  friend 
should  be,  will  recognize  the  plain  duty  of 
steady  growth.  And  many  friendships 
break  down  at  just  this  point.  There  has 
been  no  earnest  effort  to  retain  an  interest- 
ing personality.  One  needs  seriously  to 
ask  himself:  Am  I  here  making  it  certain 
that  I  deserve  this  high  friendship?  For 
if  friendships  are  to  abide,  there  must  be 
some  solid  basis  for  an  abiding  interest; 
and  few  of  us  have  such  native  gifts  as  can 
warrant  any  neglect  of  steady  culture  in 
some  form,  that  shall  insure  a  breadth  of 
personality  that  may  count  in  friendship. 
And  then  we  are  to  make  it  count. 
Y>  Much  depends  upon  habit  at  this  point, 
too.  Our  most  intimate  relationships  may 
become  almost  dumb,  simply  because  we 
have  formed  the  habit  of  confining  the  ex- 
pression of  our  love  here  to  one  or  two 
lines,  and  do  not  share  with  those  closest 
to  us  large  sections  of  our  life.  Even  a 
true  marriage  cannot  well  bear  such  a 
strain.  If  a  high  friendship  is  to  transcend 
and  to  outlast  the  physical  basis  of  mar- 
riage, it  must  build,  in  no  small  degree,  on 
breadth  of  personality,  and  upon  a  per- 

31 


FRIENDSHIP 

sistent  sharing  of  the  full  extent  of  one's 
interests  with  the  other^/-And  the  principle 
needs  application  as  well  in  other  family 
relations,  especially  in  relation  to  children. 
And  even  the  most  ideal  interests,  it 
should  be  noticed,  lose  by  lack  of  breadth 
of  vision,  by  any  attempted  isolation  in  the 
spirit  of  exclusiveness.  Our  highest  aims, 
including  those  of  friendship,  gain  by  wide 
and  varied  application.  Only  so  can  they 
be  significant  and  dominant  in  the  whole 
life.  High  intention  is  not  enough.  If  we 
wish,  therefore,  the  highest  in  us  greatly  to 
count  in  our  friendship  with  another,  we 
may  not  ignore  the  breadth  either  of  his  na- 
ture or  of  our  own ;  and  we  must  see  that  no 
single  finite  relationship,  however  precious, 
can  call  us  out  on  every  side.  And  that 
will  mean  at  once  that  a  narrow  and  selfish 
jealousy,  that  would  limit  my  friend  to  his 
sole  relationship  to  me,  is  the  blindest  folly 
for  us  both.  Certain  relations,  of  course, 
have  a  unique  quality  that  cannot  be  shared 
without  spoiling  them.  But  that  does  not 
at  all  shut  out  other  friendships  of  another 
kind.  Even  in  the  most  intimate  love, 
therefore,  there  is  need  of  the  frankest 
32 


BREADTH  OF  PERSONALITY 

recognition  of  other  relationships,  if  it  is 
itself  to  mean  most  and  be  at  its  best. 

So  Lotze  says:  "This  need  of  others' 
recognition  runs  through  our  whole  life; 
even  the  most  modest  love  does  not  wish 
to  hide  its  joy  forever.  He  who  has  a 
friend  desires  to  show  his  pride  in  him  be- 
fore the  world,  and  the  praise  which  we 
receive  from  another  does  not  please  us 
so  much  as  the  consciousness  of  being 
honored  by  it  in  the  presence  of  some  third 
person."  "The  drama  of  life  is  too  tame 
when  it  is  played  by  only  two  persons ;  they 
want  at  least  the  chorus  to  keep  them  in 
mind  of  the  inexhaustible  fulness  of  human 
interests  of  which  only  a  small  portion  can 
be  brought  into  consciousness  by  their  own 
relations  to  one  another."1 

In  our  relation  to  God,  too,  this  demand 
for  breadth  of  personality  has  its  manifest 
and  needed  applications. 

God's  dealing  with  us  does  not  ignore 
this  many-sidedness  of  our  nature.  That 
many-sided  nature,  as  well  as  the  richly 
varied  environment  in  the  midst  of  which 
we  are  placed,  is  his  own  gift.  It  cannot 
be  his  desire  to  ignore  all  this  in  his  rela- 

1  Lotze,  The  Microcosmus,  Vol.  II,  p.  92. 

c  33 


FRIENDSHIP 

tion  to  us.  Rather  such  facts  must  mean 
that  he  would  have  us  seek  him,  not  in  any 
single,  exclusive  way,  however  great  and 
supreme  that  may  be,  but  hold  ourselves 
open  to  him  along  every  avenue  of  our  be- 
ing, finding  him  in  all,  permeating  all  life 
and  all  reality  with  this  sense  of  our  re- 
lationship to  him.  So  Christ  finds  God 
everywhere,  in  nature,  and  in  daily  life,  as 
well  as  in  prayer.  The  religious  life  too 
often  lacks  this  largeness  and  comprehen- 
siveness of  grasp,  and  seems,  even  to  the 
man  himself,  to  concern  only  a  little  section 
of  his  life.  One  of  the  most  hopeful 
signs  of  our  time  is  the  recognition  of  the 
need  of  greater  breadth  of  interest  in  the 
religious  life.  Practically,  too,  God  wishes 
to  bring  us  out  on  every  side;  and  just  here 
lies  the  reason  for  the  "manifold  tempta- 
tions," that  we  may  be  "perfect  and  entire, 
lacking  in  nothing." 

And  it  is  not  only  the  breadth  of  our 
own  natures  and  of  our  environment  which 
calls  for  largeness  in  the  religious  life,  but 
the  first  thought  of  the  infinite  resources  of 
the  life  of  God.  If  we  are  to  come  to  any 
adequate  knowledge  of  such  a  God,  we 
need  every  side  of  his  manifold  revelation 
34 


BREADTH  OF  PERSONALITY 

of  himself.  Great  and  continuous  growth 
is  possible  to  us  here,  especially  in  a  deep- 
ening knowledge  of  God  in  Christ.  We 
have  probably  only  begun  to  fathom 
Christ's  meaning.  And  to  this  greatness 
of  the  divine  nature  we  may  turn  from  all 
the  lacks  of  finite  friends. 

God's  relation  to  us,  also,  it  should  be 
noticed,  as  against  much  earlier  feeling,  is 
never  a  narrowly  and  selfishly  jealous  one. 
He  cannot  do  otherwise  than  demand  that 
the  relation  to  him  should  be  the  supreme 
and  dominant  relation;  not  because  he 
wishes  to  exclude  other  relations — on  the 
contrary,  it  is  the  faithful  loving  fulfilment 
of  these  relations  that  he  specially  seeks 
from  us;  but,  just  because  his  relation  to 
us  is  so  fundamental  a  one,  the  very  health 
of  every  other  relation  requires  that  the 
relation  to  God  should  be  made  supreme. 
This  is  to  give  it  only  its  true  and  inevitable 
place.  And  any  human  relation  only  suf- 
fers and  becomes  a  monstrosity  when  it 
would  usurp  the  place  of  the  relation  to 
God.  It  does  not  take  on  larger  meaning 
by  such  an  attempt;  it  loses  meaning,  for 
it  puts  every  relation  of  life  out  of  true 
adjustment. 

35 


FRIENDSHIP 

But  with  this  recognition  of  the  suprem- 
acy of  the  relation  to  God,  every  true 
human  love  is  a  help,  not  a  hindrance,  in 
our  strictly  religious  life.  Indeed,  every 
such  relation  is  a  part  of  the  divine  allot- 
ment, and  part  of  the  divine  training. 
The  human  and  the  divine  relations  con- 
stantly interplay  to  the  further  exalting  of 
both.  God  is  jealous  of  no  true  love;  he 
rather  rejoices  in  it. 


VI.     DEPTH  OF  PERSONALITY 

And  there  must  be  depth  of  personal- 
ity, some  sense  of  the  deep  and  steadily 
deepening  significance  of  life,  through 
which  alone  the  golden  rule  grows  with 
the  years.  For  where  one's  own  self  has 
revealed  depths  unplumbed,  and  one's  own 
demands  upon  life  have  continuously  in- 
creased, there  the  recognized  debt  to  the 
other  has  grown  correspondingly.  Char- 
acter can  else  hardly  gain  profoundness 
at  all. 

"One  part  of  our  conscience,"  Lotze 
says,  "that  which  speaks  of  our  reciprocal 
duties,  is  soon  satisfied,  and  this  the  more 
easily  in  proportion  as  the  claims  on  life 
and  enjoyment  of  all  concerned  are  the  less. 
But  that  other  part  of  our  conscience  which 
enjoins  upon  us  to  make  very  large  claims 
upon  existence,  can  only  raise  its  voice  in 
proportion  as  insight  into  the  destiny  of 
man  and  his  place  in  nature  increases. 
This  nobler  morality  is  never  attained 
without  the  most  active  cooperation  of  the 
intellect,  indeed  never  wholly  without  the 
cooperation  of  scientific  reflection.  Yet 
indeed  never  by  these  alone ;  the  experience 
of  life  itself  is  indispensable."1  Here 

1  Lotze,  The  Microcosmus,  Vol.  I,  p.  712. 

37 


FRIENDSHIP 

breadth  and  depth  of  personality  are  closely 
interwoven.  The  deeper  significance  of 
life  can  only  come  out  through  breadth  of 
experience  and  training.  And  Lotze's 
argument  here  shows  impressively  how 
high  friendship  requires  growing  lives. 

This  sense  of  the  meaning  of  life  has 
no  place  for  that  indifferent,  falsely  toler- 
ant folly  that  puts  all  values  on  a  dead 
level — that  knows  no  high  resolves,  no 
burning  enthusiasms,  no  hot  indignations. 
It  is  not  without  insight  that  Dante  makes 
both  heaven  and  hell  reject  those  who 
know  no  decisive  choices,  who  are  "neither 
for  God  nor  for  his  enemies."  And 
nothing  makes  more  impossible  a  genuinely 
significant  friendship  than  the  lackadaisical 
indifference  that  finds  no  heights  and 
depths  anywhere,  that  returns  the  same 
response  of  spirit  to  each  appeal,  trivial  or 
exalted.  One  can  comprehend  the  Duke's 
impatience,  though  it  be  harsh,  in  Brown- 
ing's My  Last  Duchess: 

"She  had 

A  heart — how  shall  I  say? — too  soon  made  glad, 
Too  easily  impressed:  she  liked  whate'er 
She  looked  on,  and  her  looks  went  everywhere, 
Sir,  'twas  all  one!     My  favor  at  her  breast, 

38 


DEPTH  OF  PERSONALITY 

The  dropping  of  the  daylight  in  the  West, 
The  bough  of  cherries  some  officious  fool 
Broke  in  the  orchard  for  her,  the  white  mule 
She  rode  with  round  the  terrace — all  and  each 
Would  draw  from  her  alike  the  approving  speech, 
Or  blush,  at  least." 

Browning's  Duchess  shows  that  this 
demand  for  depth  of  personality  means 
something  more  and  other  than  breadth  of 
interest.  It  is  not  enough  that  my  friend 
should  be  interested  in  many  things.  His 
breadth  must  be  a  discriminating  breadth. 
He  must  see  how  deeply  significant  certain 
interests  are.  He  must  have  power  of 
selection  and  of  emphasis.  He  must  see 
things  in  their  true  proportions  and  care 
greatly  for  the  great  things,  and  take  on 
greatly  great  purposes.  He  must  have 
waked  up  to  the  deep  meaning  of  human 
life.  Otherwise,  however  wide  his  interest, 
he  remains  shallow  and  fickle,  unable  to 
satisfy  me  in  my  deepest  needs.  And  this 
that  I  demand  from  my  friend  he  must 
demand  from  me  in  like  manner.  No 
high  friendship  is  possible  on  lower  terms. 
It  is  here  that  the  sometimes  broadly  edu- 
cated "man  of  the  world"  often  so 
grievously  fails.  It  is  simply  not  in  him  to 

39 


FRIENDSHIP 

give  a  deep  response  in  friendship.  He 
believes  in  nothing  very  much,  not  much 
in  men,  not  much  in  friendship. 

Now,  it  is  precisely  at  this  point  above 
all  that  religion  has  its  great  contribution 
to  make.  The  great  fundamental  convic- 
tions that  give  undying  meaning  to  life  be- 
long to  it.  It  feels  the  greatness  of  man 
and  of  his  destiny — a  destiny  that  means 
no  less  than  that  in  endless  development 
one  may  share  the  life  of  God  himself. 
The  very  possibility  of  friendship  with 
God  transfigures  life.  The  religious  con- 
victions, thus,  tend  inevitably  to  deepen 
every  human  friendship,  to  make  it  vastly 
more  significant.  And  it  is  difficult  to  see 
how,  apart  from  these  great  religious  con- 
victions, a  friendship  can  come  to  its  best. 
If  I  cannot  believe  that  my  friend  has  with- 
in him  "the  power  of  the  endless  life,"  and 
that  he  is  by  very  nature  a  child  of  God,  of 
priceless  value  in  the  sight  of  God,  the 
meaning  of  my  friendship  is  vastly  changed. 
In  the  unconscious,  instinctive  response  of 
my  spirit  to  his  spirit,  I  may  forget  for  a 
moment  the  transitoriness  and  utter  result- 
lessness  of  our  relations  each  to  the  other, 
but  the  dark  fact  remains  to  embitter  all 
40 


DEPTH  OF  PERSONALITY 

our  association.  Human  friendship  can 
least  of  all  spare  the  hopes  of  religion. 
The  human  cries  out  irresistibly  for  the 
support  of  the  divine. 

In  the  friendship  with  God,  too,  the 
recognition  of  the  need  of  depth  of  per- 
sonality is  paramount.  Indeed,  it  might 
almost  be  said  to  be  the  very  essence  of 
religion  that  it  sees  and  feels  the  depth  and 
meaning  of  life.  God's  demand  upon  us, 
as  ours  upon  one  another,  is  that  we  re- 
spond with  some  depth  of  conviction  and 
purpose,  seeing  life's  high  meaning  as  he 
sees  it,  making  the  supreme  things  truly 
supreme.  The  "shallow  ground"  men,  to 
Jesus'  thought,  "have  no  root  in  them- 
selves." And  against  this  essential  friv- 
olousness  of  purpose,  God  and  every 
true  friend  must  protest.  The  demand  is 
for  the  note  of  Christ — for  that  basic 
earnestness  of  spirit  that,  while  it  is  neither 
narrow  nor  hysterical,  cannot  be  essentially 
frivolous.  And  every  high  human  friend- 
ship, I  suppose,  in  its  own  proportion,  re- 
quires something  very  like  this.  Here  too, 
thus,  the  conditions  of  the  human  and  of 
the  divine  friendship  are  quite  akin.  There 
must  be  depth  of  personality. 

41 


VII.     THE  DUTY  OF  GROWTH 

When  we  survey,  now,  this  initial  de- 
mand of  every  worthy  friendship  for  in- 
tegrity, breadth,  and  depth  of  personality, 
we  cannot  fail  to  see  that  at  every  point  it 
carries  with  it  the  imperative  duty  of 
growth.  There  may  be  in  any  relation  a 
short-sighted  self-sacrifice  that  defeats  it- 
self. One  fears  sometimes  that  mothers, 
for  example,  so  give  themselves  to  their 
children  as  to  forbid  all  growth  for  them- 
selves; and  that  only  means,  that  the  time 
hastens  on  apace  when,  with  the  growth  of 
the  children,  the  mothers  will  not  have  the 
self  to  give  that  then  is  needed.  If  you 
would  not  cut  yourself  off  from  later  serv- 
ice of  your  friend,  you  must  grow  with  his 
growth.  So  Jowett  wrote  to  Stanley:  "I 
earnestly  hope  that  the  friendship  which 
commenced  between  us  many  years  ago, 
may  be  a  blessing  to  last  us  through  life. 
I  feel  that  if  it  is  to  be  so  we  must  both 
go  onward,  otherwise  the  tear  and  wear  of 
life,  and  the  'having  travelled  over  each 
other's  minds,'  and  a  thousand  accidents 
will  be  sufficient  to  break  it  off."1 

And  in  our  relation  to  God,  the  same 
need  is  not  less  imperative.  For  God  him- 

1  Quoted  by  Black,  Friendship,  p.  152. 
42 


THE  DUTY  OF  GROWTH 

self  and  the  relation  to  him  cannot  steadily 
grow  to  mean  more  to  us  without  our  own 
growth.  It  is  not  enough  that  one  should 
begin  his  religious  life  with  an  initial  right 
purpose,  and  maintain  that.  His  purpose 
itself  should  grow  on  him  in  breadth  and 
depth  and  delicacy  of  application.1  Our 
religious  life  greatly  needs  the  use  of  a 
spiritual  imagination,  consummate  skill, 
and  persistent  ambition.  We  are  all  too 
ready  to  let  it  slip  into  meaning  only  a  kind 
of  routine  keeping  up  of  two  or  three 
things.  And  yet,  Christ's  conception  is 
always  that  that  to  which  he  calls  is  life, 
abundant  life,  even  "a  hundredfold  now 
in  this  time."  "We  are  ambitious"  Paul 
says,  "to  be  well-pleasing  unto  him."  We 
need  to  be  sure  that  our  religious  lives  are 
constantly  enriching,  reaching  out  to  per- 
meate the  world  for  us. 

1  Cf.  King,  Rational  Living,  pp.  118-120. 


.43 


DEEP    COMMUNITY    OF    INTER- 
ESTS 


VIII.     COMMUNITY     IN     LARGE 
NOT  SMALL  INTERESTS 

Into  this  solid  basis  underlying  every 
friendship  worthy  the  name,  there  must 
enter  also  some  deep  community  of  inter- 
ests. Let  friendship,  Emerson  says,  "be 
an  alliance  of  two  large,  formidable 
natures,  mutually  beheld,  mutually  feared, 
before  yet  they  recognize  the  deep  identity 
which  beneath  these  disparities,  unites 
them."  The  recognition  of  identity  natur- 
ally follows  the  sense  of  the  significance  of 
the  persons  concerned.  And  that  deep 
identity  there  must  be,  if  the  friendship  is 
to  be  of  the  highest. 

There  need  not  be  likeness,  truly, 
whether  of  disposition,  temperament,  or 
education.  One  can  hardly  doubt  that 
Aristotle  demanded  too  much  at  this  point. 
Indeed,  the  most  genuine  unity  must  be  of 
that  organic  kind  that  is  possible  only 
where  differences  exist,  and  are  gladly 
recognized  and  welcomed. 

Nor  need  the  community  be  in  lesser 
matters  of  whims  or  fancies,  or  even 
tastes  or  occupations.  Much  is  often  made 
of  these  likenesses;  but  it  is  quite  probable 
that  the  friendship  may  be  finally  more 

47 


FRIENDSHIP 

satisfying  and  more  fruitful,  where  there 
are  differences  in  all  these  respects. 

But  yet,  deep  down  under  all  these  more 
superficial  likenesses  or  differences,  there 
must  be  community  in  the  great  funda- 
mental moral  and  spiritual  ideals  and  pur- 
poses of  life,  if  there  is  not  to  be  tragic 
failure  in  the  friendship.  No  friendship 
is  so  poverty  stricken,  so  fatally  defective, 
as  that  in  which  there  is  no  sympathy  in 
the  highest  moments.  This,  undoubtedly, 
is  Paul's  thought  in  his  exhortation  to  the 
Corinthians  to  "be  not  unequally  yoked  to- 
gether with  unbelievers."  He  is  not  seek- 
ing, as  seems  sometimes  thought,  to  put 
some  narrowing  limit  upon  their  lives, 
shutting  them  out  from  rich  experiences. 
Rather,  it  is  as  though  he  said,  I  would 
save  you,  if  I  might,  from  the  bitterness  of 
finding  yourselves  bound  up  in  the  most 
intimate  relations  of  life  with  those  who 
can  have  no  sympathy  with  you  in  your 
highest  aims  and  aspirations. 

One  may  well  pray  to  be  saved  from 
such  close  and  intimate  relation  with  those 
who  can  never  share  his  best,  upon  whom 
he  must  turn  his  back  when  he  would  be 
absolutely  true  to  his  best  vision.  There 
48 


COMMUNITY  IN  LARGE  INTERESTS 

is  small  promise  surely  of  a  satisfying  love, 
where  each  despises  the  ideals  of  the  other. 
Has  life  any  direr  tragedy  than  this  deep 
sundering  of  souls  closely  bound  together? 


49 


IX.    ABIDING  RELATIONS  WITH 
MEN  AND  GOD 

Men  wonder  if  they  shall  recognize  their 
friends  in  heaven.  They  need  hardly 
wonder.  Are  the  ties  that  bind  them  of 
the  eternal  kind?  That  is  the  real  ques- 
tion. What  Trumbull  says  of  marriage 
holds  of  every  intimate  personal  relation: 
"Those  who  are  united  in  marriage  ought 
to  be  united  also  in  friendship  [a  purely 
unselfish  love] ;  but  unless  marriage  in- 
cludes this  union  of  souls,  marriage  must 
end  with  the  life  that  is."  If  one  seeks 
personal  relations  that  will  abide,  that  is 
to  say,  the  relation  itself  must  have  eternal 
quality;  it  must  be  built  upon  community 
in  interests  and  ideals  that  are  themselves 
enduring. 

There  can  be,  thus,  no  permanent  friend- 
ship without  deep  community  of  interests. 
True  friends  must  be  able  to  say  to  each 
other,  "I  love  what  thou  West,  and  hate 
what  thou  hatest.  The  interests  which  are 
supreme  for  thee  shall  be  supreme  for  me. 
And  these  supreme  interests  may  bind  us 
ever,  for  they  are  eternal." 

One  of  the  alluring  promises  of  the 
future  is  that,  in  the  on-going  of  the  king- 
dom of  God,  as  men  come  more  and  more 
50 


to  take  on  the  largest  interests  and  the 
great  purposes  and  causes,  this  deep  com- 
munity of  interests  between  friends  will 
become  more  possible  for  all,  and  in  in- 
creasing degree.  They  will  truly  and  fully 
share  each  other's  permanent,  dominant 
interests. 

Now,  it  is  exactly  this  deep  identity  in 
commanding  interests  that  the  Heavenly 
Father  seeks  with  his  child.  No  possible 
sentiments  or  experiences  may  take  its 
place.  The  great  aims  of  the  man  must 
agree  with  the  great  aims  of  God,  if  there 
is  to  be  any  harmonious  relation  between 
them.  God  cannot  give  up  his  righteous 
and  loving  purposes  for  all  men;  the  man 
must  come  to  share  them.  The  interests  of 
God's  kingdom  must  become  the  man's 
really  dominating  interests.  For  any  close 
and  satisfying  and  abiding  relation  with 
God,  as  with  men,  one  must  and  one  may 
say:  "The  interests  which  are  supreme  for 
Thee  shall  be  supreme  for  me."  What 
else  but  this  is  the  very  keynote  of  the 
prayer  that  Jesus  meant  should  character- 
ize his  disciples :  "Thy  kingdom  come,  thy 
will  be  done"? 

And  it  is  no  hard  condition.     Rather  it 

51 


FRIENDSHIP 

is  the  zest  and  glory  of  life  that  it  is  given 
us  thus  intelligently  and  voluntarily  to  be 
co-workers  with  God  in  his  marvelous 
plans.  What  is  the  aim  of  the  whole  new 
science  of  sociology,  but  to  enable  us  thus 
to  work  intelligently  and  effectively  into 
the  plan  of  God?  And  just  as  in  the 
human  friendship,  the  beauty  and  the  joy 
of  the  divine  friendship  cannot  fully  come 
out  except  in  this  glad  identity  of  interests. 
For  the  prayer,  "Thy  will  be  done,"  is  not 
some  fearful  spell  certain  to  bring  evil;  it 
is  the  prayer,  rather,  that  the  best  that  the 
love  and  the  wisdom  of  the  infinite  Father 
can  devise  may  be  done  in  and  for  me,  and 
for  all  men.  It  is  no  prayer,  therefore,  to 
shrink  from,  but  to  take  on  rejoicingly, 
although  like  any  true  love,  God's  love  will 
not  choose  for  us  simply  the  immediately 
easiest. 


MUTUAL  SELF-MANIFESTATION 
AND  ANSWERING  TRUST 


X.     MUTUAL     SELF-MANIFESTA- 
TION 

If  for  any  true  friendship  there  must 
be  in  the  friends  themselves  integrity, 
breadth,  and  depth  of  personality,  and 
some  deep  community  of  interests;  be- 
tween them  there  must  be,  even  more  man- 
ifestly, honest  mutual  self-revelation  and 
answering  trust,  and  mutual  self-giving. 
These  are  equally  basic  with  the  other 
qualities.  How  can  there  be  any  friend- 
ship without  them? 

Certainly  there  must  be  honest  mutual 
self-revelation  and  answering  trust.  No 
acquaintance  is  possible  at  all  without  real 
mutual  self-disclosure.  Otherwise  the  re- 
lation is  only  an  imaginary  one,  and  there 
is  no  true  ground  for  trust.  The  self- 
revelation  may  take  place  in  most  diverse 
manners,  by  every  mode  of  manifestation, 
subtle  or  outspoken,  but  take  place  it  must, 
or  the  personalities  will  remain  hidden  from 
each  other,  and  no  genuine  acquaintance 
result. 

Honest,  of  course,  the  revelation  must 
be;  how  should  it  be  revelation  else? 
Emerson  makes  truth  one  of  the  two 
sovereign  elements  in  friendship;  and  he 
even  defines  a  friend  as  "a  person  with 

55 


FRIENDSHIP 

whom  I  may  be  sincere."  "Before  him  I 
may  think  aloud."  Pretense  hurts  every- 
where. And  essential  falseness  makes 
friendship  simply  impossible. 

I  suppose  the  desire  to  avoid  every 
possible  pretense  is  the  key  to  the  Friends' 
meeting,  with  their  sitting  in  silence.  It 
wishes  no  manifestation  that  is  not  plainly 
from  God,  and  is  not  a  kind  of  inevitable 
revelation  of  the  inner  life  of  the  speaker. 
Reality  is  the  supreme  end  sought.  The 
method  has  its  own  dangers,  but  the  goal 
is  a  great  one. 

Certainly  we  cannot  build  on  pretense  in 
any  relation.  If  fundamental  truth  is 
lacking,  one  has  neither  an  honest  self  to 
give,  nor  can  he  bear  honest  witness,  either, 
concerning  those  values  that  he  conceives 
himself  most  to  prize.  He  is  certain,  there- 
fore, to  fail  in  the  two  greatest  services 
that  any  man  can  render  another. 

Not  less  manifestly  must  the  self-revela- 
tion be  mutual,  if  the  relation  is  not  to  be 
altogether  defective.  The  spirit  of  faith- 
ful, unselfish  love  on  the  part  of  one  may 
be  maintained,  no  doubt,  though  the  other 
quite  fail;  but  the  friendship  as  a  mu- 
tual relation  breaks  down.  For  friendship 
56 


MUTUAL  SELF-MANIFESTATION 

involves  the  sharing  of  selves.  And  one 
of  the  greatest  aspects,  certainly,  of  love 
is  "joy  in  personal  life."  Each  friend 
must  be  able  to  give  that  joy  and  to  enter 
into  it. 

And  the  intimacy  of  the  friendship  de- 
pends on  the  extent  of  the  mutual  self- 
revelation.  One  can  almost  classify  his 
friendships  by  this  test  alone.  There  are 
many  with  whom  one  hardly  gets  farther 
than  to  talk  about  the  weather;  there  is 
practically  no  revelation  of  the  personality, 
except  a  casual  good  will.  And  there  are 
all  gradations  of  acquaintance,  from  this 
weather  degree  to  the  completest  revela- 
tion that  it  is  possible  for  one  soul  to  make 
to  another  in  the  closest  relations  of  life. 

The  many-sidedness  of  some  person- 
alities is  such  that  they  probably  reveal 
themselves  but  very  partially  in  any  one 
relation.  The  full  meaning  of  such  a  life 
can  be  disclosed  only  as  the  self-revelations 
in  many  different  relations  are  made  to 
supplement  each  other.  And  it  is  one  of 
the  delightful  surprises  of  the  thought- 
ful and  sympathetic  to  find  unlooked-for 
depths  even  in  persons  thought  quite  com- 
monplace. Even  the  human  spirit  can 

57 


FRIENDSHIP 

hardly  be  plumbed  with  a  button  and  a 
string.  The  phenomena  of  multiple  per- 
sonality and  of  subliminal  consciousness, 
and  even  of  the  characteristics  of  many  of 
our  dreams,  may  well  suggest  the  possibil- 
ity of  many  unplumbed  depths  in  us  all. 
And  a  creature  like  man,  capable  of  endless 
development,  can  hardly  be  essentially 
shallow.  Where  this  seems  to  be  the  case, 
we  have  probably  simply  not  yet  found  the 
key  to  the  hidden  treasures. 

Even  self-knowledge  is  but  a  gradually 
growing  thing;  and  friendship  is  one  of  its 
chiefest  helps.  A  mind  as  great  even  as 
Leibnitz'  seemed  always  to  need  the  provo- 
cation of  another  mind  to  give  out  its  best. 
Goethe  and  Schiller  consciously  helped 
each  other  not  only  to  better  work,  but  not 
less  to  completer  self-understanding,  to 
which  the  best  work  must  go  back.  Every 
true  teacher  knows  how  much  he  owes  here 
to  his  pupils.  "As  in  water  face  answereth 
to  face,  so  in  the  heart  man  answers  to 
man." 

Matthew     Arnold     has     pointed     out, 
thus,  how  high   a  service  friendship  may 
render,  in  revealing  our  deepest  selves  to 
ourselves. 
58 


MUTUAL  SELF-MANIFESTATION 

"Only — but  this  is  rare — 

When  a  beloved  hand  is  laid  in  ours, 
When,  jaded  with  the  rush  and  glare 

Of   the   interminable   hours, 
Our  eyes  can  in  another's  eyes  read  clear, 
When  our  world-deafened  ear 
Is  by  the  tones  of  a  loved  voice  caressed,— 
A  bolt  is  shot  back  somewhere   in  our  breast 
And   a  lost  pulse  of  feeling  stirs  again, 
The  eye  sinks  inward  and  the  heart  lies  plain, 
And  what  we  mean,  we  say,  and  what  we  would, 

we  know ; 

A  man  becomes  aware  of  his  life's  flow, 
And  hears  the  winding  murmur,  and  he  sees 
The  meadows  where  it  glides,  the  sun,  the  breeze." 


59 


XL     ANSWERING  TRUST 

And  yet,  even  mutual  self-revelation  is 
of  no  avail  for  friendship,  without  answer- 
ing trust.  Not  trust  without  revelation, 
but  trust  upon  revelation.  A  true  friend- 
ship has  no  need  to  make  terms.  Where 
need  is  felt  for  many  preliminary  settle- 
ments, there  it  is  demonstrated  that  the 
basis  for  a  true  friendship  does  not  yet 
exist.  "Perfect  love  casteth  out  fear." 
"Men  can  do  nothing  with  each  other 
without  a  certain  minimum  of  trust,"  an- 
other has  said.  Even  civilization  goes 
forward  only  as  trust  deepens.  And  one 
may  be  sure  that  unless  this  trust  becomes 
deep  and  strong,  no  really  worthy  friend- 
ship can  be  possible. 

Men  pride  themselves  so  much  on  never 
being  deceived  by  any  meanness  of  men, 
that  they  are  likely  quite  to  forget  the 
beauty  and  the  priceless  value  of  the  unsus- 
picious spirit.  The  suspicious  and  cynical 
may  discover  all  the  pettiness  of  men;  but 
the  nobleness  of  men  is  quite  hidden  from 
them.  Suspicion  breeds  the  realization  of 
its  own  fears.  And  trust  calls  out  the  very 
qualities  in  which  it  believes,  and  can  alone 
accomplish  the  greatest  aims  with  men. 
We  probably  follow  Christ  less  closely  in 
60 


ANSWERING  TRUST 

his  matchless  faith  in  men,  even,  than  in 
his  faith  in  God.  "Faith  In  man  is  essen- 
tial to  faith  in  God."  "The  great  miracle 
of  friendship  with  its  infinite  wonder  and 
beauty  may  be  denied  to  us,  and  yet  we 
may  believe  in  it.  To  believe  that  it  is 
possible  is  enough,  even  though  in  its 
superbest  form  it  has  never  come  to  us.  To 
possess  it,  is  to  have  one  of  the  world's 
sweetest  gifts."1 

The  trust  that  underlies  a  worthy  friend- 
ship must  be  twofold — trust  in  the  charac- 
ter and  trust  in  the  love  of  one's  friend. 
A  true  friend  is  no  longer  "on  probation." 
You  can  trust  him  where  you  cannot  see. 
He  does  not  need  to  give  account  of  all  his 
goings,  or  explain  his  every  mood.  You 
believe  in  him — in  his  character  and  in  his 
love,  and  you  rest  in  that  in  comfort  and 
peace.  Where  such  trust  is  lacking,  the 
relation  is  only  one  of  unrest  and  torment, 
for  "fear  hath  torment." 

And  revelation  and  trust  deepen  each 
other.  They  grow  continually  together. 

1  Black,  Friendship,  pp.  24,  25. 


6l 


XII.     REVELATION    AND    TRUST 
IN  RELATION  TO  GOD 

Now,  we  often  think  of  revelation  and 
trust  as  peculiarly  religious  terms.  But 
this  is  so  far  from  being  true  that,  as  we 
have  seen,  there  is  no  single  worthy  human 
relation  into  which  we  enter  that  is  not 
fundamentally  built  on  these  two  elements 
— revelation  and  trust;  and  every  step  into 
still  better  relations  is  a  step  taken  by 
virtue  of  a  fuller  revelation  and  an  answer- 
ing fuller  trust. 

Our  relation  to  God  is  not  different. 
God's  self-revelation  calls  out  our  trust. 
He  asks  no  faith  on  other  terms.  A  faith 
not  based  on  revelation  of  the  person  to  be 
trusted  is  presumption,  not  faith.  Because 
God's  personal  self-revealing  in  Christ  is 
sufficient  to  call  out  absolute  trust,  Christ 
becomes  for  us  inevitably  the  supreme 
person  of  history.  With  full  moral  self- 
consciousness,  we  can  commit  ourselves  to 
a  God  so  revealed  without  reserve.  And 
we  turn  away  from  the  one  sure  road  to  a 
real  relation  to  the  real  God,  when  we 
neglect  his  great  crowning  self-revelation 
in  Christ.  A  significant  personal  relation 
must  be  built  upon  personal  revelation. 

And  upon  our  side,  while  doubtless  God 
62 


IN  RELATION  TO  GOD 

does  not  need  information  concerning  us, 
and  in  that  sense  there  can  be  no  revelation 
of  ourselves  to  God,  still  his  deep  rever- 
ence everywhere  for  the  person  of  his 
children,  his  unbroken  refusal  anywhere  to 
override  either  their  freedom  or  their  per- 
sonality, makes  it  certain  that  he  will  await 
that  deepest  self-manifestation  which  voices 
our  consent  to  him.  We  shall  hardly  un- 
derstand or  possess  our  own  will  while  it 
remains  quite  unexpressed.  This  expres- 
sion is  needed  for  our  own  sakes,  thus. 
That  measure,  therefore,  of  self-manifesta- 
tion, at  least,  which  is  involved  in  our  full 
consent,  is  necessary  even  in  our  relation 
to  God. 

Prayer  is  not  information  for  God, 
doubtless;  but  prayer  is  our  opening  the 
door  to  his  knocking  at  the  various  recesses 
of  our  life — real  communion  of  spirit  with 
spirit.  There  is  no  added  knowledge  for 
God.  But  now  he  knows  and  he  comes  into 
our  inmost  life,  by  our  own  full  consent. 
The  logic  of  Christ  is  not,  Your  Father 
doth  not  know  what  ye  have  need  of,  there- 
fore pray  that  he  may  know — a  helpless 
God;  nor  yet  the  over-wise  counsel  of 
many  moderns — God  knows,  therefore  do 

63 


FRIENDSHIP 

not  pray;  but  rather,  Your  Father  know- 
eth,  therefore  you  may  pray.  You  may 
review  fearlessly  all  your  life  and  need  in 
his  presence,  and  commune  with  him  con- 
cerning it. 

And  in  this  light  it  becomes  no  strange 
thing  that  Christianity  should  be  preemi- 
nently a  religion  of  faith.  For,  in  the  first 
place,  we  are  concerned  here  with  the 
greatest  of  all  self-revelations  of  the  great- 
est personality.  Its  only  answer  must  be 
an  unmatched  trust.  And,  in  the  second 
place,  while  trust  is  essential  in  any  friend- 
ship, it  is  demanded  in  unique  degree  in 
relation  to  God.  For,  if  we  are  to  have 
any  freely  developing  moral  life  of  our 
own,  there  must  not  be  exerted  upon  us  the 
overpowering  pressure  of  an  inescapable 
God.  For  our  very  life's  sake,  therefore, 
God's  relation  to  us  must  be  unobtrusive. 
We  need  "the  invisible  God."  And  our 
relation  to  him,  therefore,  must  be  one  of 
faith.  "We  walk  by  faith  not  by  sight." 

Nor  is  it  true  that  Christ  asks  alone  that 
we  should  trust  God;  God  trusts  us  in 
matchless  degree.  It  is  the  very  mark  of 
the  religion  of  the  New  Testament  that  it 
is  not  a  religion  of  rules  and  prescriptions. 
64 


IN  RELATION  TO  GOD 

The  appeal  of  Christ  to  his  disciples  leaves 
all  to  their  own  sense  of  loyalty  and  love. 
In  effect  he  says,  "I  ask  but  one  thing;  do 
only  what  loyal  love  for  me  suggests ;  what 
that  shall  be  I  leave  to  you  to  decide.  I 
trust  you."  It  takes  a  high  spirit  to  be 
worthy  of  such  trust. 

The  priceless  interests  of  the  Kingdom 
he  came  to  form,  moreover,  he  commits  to 
the  feeble  hands  of  a  little  group  of  dis- 
ciples, whose  greatest  fitness  lay  simply  in 
this — that  Christ  trusted  them.  God  calls 
us  into  cooperation  with  himself.  Trust 
cannot  be  shown  more  strongly. 

And  in  every  hour  of  peculiar  trial,  of 
experience  we  cannot  fathom  or  even  par- 
tially understand,  God  trusts  us.  Just 
there,  where  we  cannot  see  at  all,  he  gives 
us  in  special  degree  opportunity  to  prove 
our  trust,  and,  like  Job,  to  become  for  men 
"Jehovah's  Champion."  "In  the  dark 
night  of  faith,  when  every  step  has  to  be 
taken  in  absolute  dependence  upon  God, 
and  assurance  that  the  vision  was  truth  and 
no  lie" — there  God  is  showing  his  highest 
trust  in  us.1  God  trusts  us.  Such  experi- 
ences are  God's  saying  to  us,  "You  do  not 

*  Rendel  Harris,  Union  with  God,  p.  109. 
E  65 


FRIENDSHIP 

need  that  I  should  explain  myself  at  every 
point.     I  trust  your  trust  in  me." 

And  it  is  not  merely  true  that  the  con- 
ditions here  of  our  relation  to  God  are 
precisely  like  those  which  hold  in  our  best 
friendships  with  men;  and  that  we  may 
therefore  know  and  use  the  laws  so  re- 
vealed. It  is  also  true  that  the  inevitable 
limitations  in  both  revelation  and  trust  in 
the  human  relations  drive  us  for  full  satis- 
faction to  the  relation  with  God. 

The  experience  of  life  makes  it  only  too 
plain  that  our  capacity  for  self-disclosure, 
in  the  first  place,  is  greatly  limited.  The 
inescapable  isolation  of  the  self  grows  upon 
us.  "The  heart  knoweth  its  own  bitter- 
ness; and  a  stranger  doth  not  intermeddle 
with  its  joy."  Even  to  the  nearest  and 
dearest  we  do  reveal,  we  can  reveal,  but  a 
fraction  of  ourselves.  Into  the  deepest 
sources  of  either  our  joy  or  our  sorrow, 
our  victory  or  our  defeat,  our  good  or  our 
evil,  we  cannot  admit  them,  though  we 
would. 

The  very  possibility,  indeed,  of  a  worth- 
ful  personality,  that  should  make  friend- 
ship of  value,   depends  on  the   carefully 
guarded  sanctity  of  the  separate  individu- 
66 


IN  RELATION  TO  GOD 

ality  with  its  own  unique  quality,  its  own 
individual  responsibility.  In  its  deepest 
depth  how  profound  is  the  solitude  of  the 
human  soul,  in  the  very  midst  of  the  com- 
plexities of  our  social  life,  even  in  the 
quietness  of  our  closest  intimacies!  "This 
rigid  and  necessary  isolation  of  the  human 
heart,  along  with  such  a  deep-rooted  desire 
for  sympathy,  is  one  of  the  most  perplex- 
ing paradoxes  of  our  nature;  and  though 
we  know  well  that  it  is  a  fact,  we  are 
constantly  rediscovering  it  with  a  fresh 
surprise."1 

And  these  facts  simply  mean  that  our 
finite  powers,  both  of  self-disclosure  and 
of  understanding  of  others,  fail  us,  and 
we  cry  out  for  an  understanding  of  our- 
selves by  others  that  surpasses  our  power 
to  give,  and  for  a  personal  revelation  from 
others  that  we  can  trust  without  reserve. 
We  are  driven  to  God.  We  are  brought 
back  again  to  Augustine's  deep  confession, 
"Thou  hast  made  us  for  Thyself,  and  our 
hearts  are  restless  until  they  find  rest  in 
Thee." 

And  both  because  of  this  limitation  in 
possible  human  revelation,  and  because  of 

1  Horton,  The  Expositor's  Bible,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  196. 

67 


FRIENDSHIP 

the  limitations  of  these  finite  personalities, 
even  so  far  as  we  can  understand  them, 
our  deepest  trust  is  baffled  in  the  human 
relations.  "The  childlike  spirit,"  Herr- 
mann says  in  a  passage  I  have  quoted  often, 
"can  only  arise  within  us  when  our  experi- 
ence is  the  same  as  a  child's ;  in  other  words, 
when  we  meet  with  a  personal  life  which 
compels  us  to  trust  it  without  reserve. 
Only  the  person  of  Jesus  can  arouse  such 
trust  in  a  man  who  has  awakened  to  moral 
self-consciousness.  If  such  a  man  surren- 
ders himself  to  anything  or  anyone  else,  he 
throws  away  not  only  his  trust  but  him- 
self."1 

In  all  this  we  are  made  for  God.  Our 
claim  on  life  is  too  great  for  the  finite  to 
satisfy  it.  And  with  clear  sense  of  our 
own  limitations  as  well  as  those  of  our 
friends,  we  must  say  even  to  our  dearest: 

"Alas!  I  can  but  love  thee. 

May  God  bless  thee,  my  beloved, — may  God  bless  thee ! 
Can  I  love  thee,  my  beloved,— can  I  love  thee? 

And  is  this  like  love,  to  stand 

With  no  help  in  my  hand, 

1  Herrmann,  Communion  of  the  Christian  with  God, 
P-  97- 

68 


IN  RELATION  TO  GOD 

When  strong  as  death  I  fain  would  watch  above  thee? 

My  love-kiss  can  deny 

No  tears  that  fall  beneath  it: 

Mine  oath  of  love  can  swear  thee 

From  no  ill  that  comes  near  thee, — 

And  thou  diest  while  I  breathe  it, 

And  I — 7  can  but  die! 
May  God  love  thee,  my  beloved, — 

May  God  love  thee!" 


69 


MUTUAL  SELF-GIVING 


XIII.    THE  GIVING  OF  THE  SELF 

Once  more,  at  the  basis  of  every  worthy 
friendship  there  must  be  mutual  self-giving. 
It  is  the  one  law  for  every  relation,  human 
or  divine.  Perhaps  the  best  definition  we 
can  give  of  love  is  simply  this :  the  giving 
of  self.  And  if  one  starts  from  another 
definition  of  love,  as  "joy  in  personal  life," 
he  will  as  certainly  reach  the  fundamental 
need  of  mutual  self-giving.  We  do  not 
enter  fully  into  one  another's  personality 
by  any  other  route.  To  know  about  my 
friend  is  not  enough;  even  that  he  should 
himself  tell  me  does  not  suffice.  Not 
knowledge  about  my  friend,  but  acquaint- 
ance with  him  is  the  aim.  I  am  not  seek- 
ing information  simply,  nor  a  certain  kind 
of  treatment,  still  less  the  things  of  my 
friend,  but  my  friend  himself;  and  unless 
there  is  in  his  self-revelation  that  indefin- 
able inner  self-communication  that  desires 
and  purposes  a  kind  of  intermingling  of 
personalities,  I  am  still  on  the  outside,  a 
spectator  only,  not  a  participator,  and 
know  myself  to  be  such.  And  it  is  no 
satisfaction  of  love  that  my  friend — not 
wishing  really  to  give  himself — should 
be  even  unusually  punctilious  in  infor- 
mation and  treatment  and  gifts.  All 

73 


FRIENDSHIP 

these  for  love  are  trash,  without  the  self. 

No  doubt  self-giving  presupposes  self- 
revelation  and  trust.  You  cannot  wholly 
surrender  where  you  do  not  trust.  No 
doubt,  also,  self-revelation  in  all  its  degrees 
may  be  a  true  manifestation  of  self-giving, 
and  the  answering  trust  at  its  best  may  be 
such  a  self-giving  on  the  other  side.  And 
the  common  New  Testament  use  of  faith 
is  made  to  involve  such  self-commitment, 
so  that  either  term  may  be  used  indiffer- 
ently. For  only  he  truly  trusts  who  is 
willing  to  follow  up  his  faith  by  self-com- 
mitment. But  at  its  center  love  is  best 
expressed  by  mutual  self-giving;  and  this 
involves  all  the  rest — the  sharing  of  all  our 
best,  withholding  from  the  service  of  our 
friend  nothing  that  we  may  rightly  give, 
oneness  of  will,  and  not  merely  of  knowl- 
edge, and  so  essential  community  of  in- 
terests. 

Here,  then,  even  more  than  in  revela- 
tion and  trust,  the  depth  of  the  friendship 
is  measured  by  the  completeness  of  the  self- 
giving;  the  worth  of  the  friendship  by  the 
richness  of  the  self  given.  And  no  man 
truly  loves,  who  would  not  by  persistent 
culture,  by  steady  submission  to  life's  dis- 
74 


GIVING  OF  THE  SELF 

cipline,  and  by  continual  growth,  bring  to 
his  friend  a  constantly  enriching  self.  Nor 
can  any  friendship  deepen,  where  the 
mutual  self-giving  does  not  go  forward, 
in  ever  new  and  larger  sharing  and  serv- 
ing;— the  best  vision  and  faith  and  inspi- 
ration and  courage  of  each  provoking  in 
the  other  his  best. 

And  every  man  who  has  even  partially 
awakened  to  the  meaning  of  a  truly  unself- 
ish friendship — certainly  every  true  father, 
however  faulty — knows  that  in  all  this  de- 
mand of  the  close  relations  of  life  for  self- 
giving,  we  have,  in  RitschPs  words,  "not 
a  weakening  denial  of  self,  but  a  strength- 
ening affirmation."  We  dreamed  of  giving, 
and  lo!  the  bounds  of  life  have  been 
pushed  out  for  us,  and  all  life  enlarged. 
We  thought  of  losing  life;  we  never  found 
life  before.  And  so,  in  one  way  or  another, 
in  the  midst  of  the  providential  relations 
of  life,  we  seem  almost  to  stumble  as  by 
accident  upon  the  sole  riches  of  unselfish 
love,  that  in  our  selfishness  we  could  not 
have  insight  enough  to  choose  for  its  own 
sake.  And  then  we  know  what  a  friend, 
what  love,  means.  And  we  are  ready  to 
say  with  Rendel  Harris,  "I  never  ask  God, 

751 


FRIENDSHIP 

or  hardly  ever,  for  outward  things;  I  do 
not  know  that  I  ever  asked  Him  for  glory 
or  honour,  and  I  hope  I  never  shall;  and 
I  very  seldom  ask  Him  for  material  things 
apart  from  the  kingdom;  but  I  sometimes 
say  things  like  this,  that  if  God  will  give 
me  three  or  four  good  friends,  I  think  I 
can  manage  to  continue  to  the  end,  because 
love  is  the  machinery  of  life  and  the 
motive  power." 

It  is  in  these  highest  and  purest  relations 
of  life  that  we  first  learn  the  true  meaning 
of  sacrifice  and  balk  not  at  it,  but  wonder- 
ingly  begin  to  discover  with  Hinton  that 
"all  pains  may  be  summed  up  in  sacrifice, 
and  sacrifice  is  the  instrument  of  joy."  We 
do  not  begrudge  our  friend  the  pains  or 
trouble  we  take  on  his  behalf;  we  are  glad 
of  the  opportunity  to  serve  him,  to  show 
our  love;  and  the  heavier  the  service,  the 
greater  the  opportunity  and  the  joy.  And 
in  the  joyful,  sacrificial  spirit,  self-giving 
reaches  its  full  culmination. 


XIV.     SELF-GIVING  IN  THE  DI- 
VINE FRIENDSHIP 

When,  then,  one  turns  from  the  human 
relations,  thus  deeply  understood,  to  the 
relation  to  God,  he  must  see  at  once  that 
religion's  demand  for  self-surrender,  self- 
denial,  self-giving,  complete  commitment — 
is  no  demand  peculiar  to  God,  is  no  demand 
made  arbitrarily  by  God. 

God  asks  here  precisely  what  in  our 
measure  we  ask  from  one  another.  And 
you  can  be  the  friend  of  God  on  precisely 
the  same  terms  on  which  you  can  be  the 
friend  of  another  man.  No  true  friend- 
ship, no  satisfying  personal  relation,  could 
be  possible  otherwise.  God  cannot  truly 
give  himself  to  us,  except  In  the  proportion 
in  which  we  give  ourselves  to  him.  Even 
in  our  human  relations,  the  calculating, 
self-withholding  friend  is  necessarily  shut 
out  from  the  best  his  unselfish  friend  would 
give  him;  he  simply  cannot  understand 
it,  share  it,  or  enter  into  it.  He  lacks  the 
capacity  even  to  receive  his  friend's  best 
blessing.  That  could  come  only  as  his  own 
self  responded  to  the  dominant  note  of  his 
friend.  Still  more  must  this  be  true  in  our 
relation  to  God,  where  the  limitations  of 

77 


FRIENDSHIP 

our  human  friends  do  not  come  in  to  mar 
the  result. 

In  the  light  of  our  experience  in  our 
best  human  relations,  it  is  passing  strange 
that  these  demands  for  self-giving  in  rela- 
tion to  God  still  have  for  us  so  harsh  and 
hard  a  sound.  Every  human  relation  truly 
fulfilled  is  crowded  with  proofs  of  the 
priceless  contribution  of  an  unselfish  love, 
of  our  surpassing  joy  in  personal  life.  We 
may  trust  the  law  to  the  end  and  be  sure 
that  in  like  surrender  to  God  we  shall  find 
life,  and  here  alone  the  largest  life.  The 
first  and  second  commandments  of  Christ 
thus  inevitably  fall  together  and  reveal  but 
a  single  law;  and  the  second  looks  to  the 
first  to  complete  it. 

Here,  too,  the  human  limitations  drive 
to  God;  the  human  friendship  trains  for 
the  divine.  There  are  two  opposite  in- 
stincts in  men — the  instinct  for  unlimited 
self-devotion  and  the  instinct  of  insatiate 
thirst  for  love.  There  is  only  one  relation 
in  which  both  may  be  absolutely  unchecked. 
As  God  alone  can  call  out  absolute  trust, 
so  to  him  alone  may  we  give  ourselves 
unstintedly;  in  him  alone  find  our  thirst 
fully  quenched.  There  is  something  closely 
78 


GIVING  OF  THE  SELF 

akin  to  blasphemy  in  much  modern  praise 
of  love  between  men  and  women.  "I  would 
rather  be  broken  by  you  than  caressed  by 
another,"  a  modern  novelist  makes  the 
heroine  say  to  the  hero.  But  I  suppose  we 
may  never  so  absolutely  give  ourselves  in 
any  human  relation.  There  are  plain  limits 
here  beyond  which  we  may  not  go  and 
maintain  the  integrity  of  our  spirit  or  our 
self-respect.  To  transgress  these  limits 
means  only  damage  both  to  our  friends  and 
to  ourselves.  But  where  we  can  trust  abso- 
lutely, we  can  submit  absolutely;  and  find 
ourselves,  moreover,  most  fully  in  this  com- 
pletest  surrender  of  ourselves  to  God. 
The  law  of  life  through  surrender,  thus, 
reaches  only  here  its  logical  fulfilment. 

In  all  these  fundamental  prerequisites  to 
a  high  friendship,  integrity,  breadth,  and 
depth  of  personality,  some  deep  community 
of  interests,  honest  mutual  self-revelation 
and  answering  trust,  and  mutual  self-giv- 
ing,— religion  proves  its  inevitable  kinship 
with  the  rest  of  life  not  only  because  its 
demands  are  the  same,  not  different,  but 
also  because  it  thus  becomes  clear  that  the 
religious  life  is  not  shut  off  in  a  sphere  of 
mystery,  but  has  as  its  laws  the  laws  of  the 

79 


FRIENDSHIP 

highest  life  everywhere — laws  that  we  may 
know  and  fulfil. 

Nor  is  this  all.  We  have  seen,  too,  that 
the  logical  climax  in  all  these  prerequisites 
to  highest  friendship  is  to  be  found  only 
in  the  relation  to  God.  Here  alone  is  that 
richest  self  which  we  everywhere  seek; 
here  alone  the  highest  community  of  inter- 
ests; here  alone  the  perfect  self-revelation 
and  absolute  trust;  here  alone  complete 
self-giving.  And  that  is  to  say,  that  along 
all  the  highest  lines  of  his  being,  the  nature 
of  man  points  unvaryingly  to  God. 

In  no  sentimental  sense  at  all,  then,  but 
in  recognition  rather  of  what  is  deepest  and 
most  essential  in  us,  we  must  say  with  the 
Psalmist,  "As  the  hart  panteth  after  the 
water  brooks,  so  panteth  my  soul  after 
thee,  O  God.  My  soul  thirsteth  for  God, 
for  the  living  God;  when  shall  I  come  and 
appear  before  God?"  Our  life  is  fulfilled 
only  in  God.  It  is  this  deepest  fact  of  all 
our  life  that  Matheson  voices: 

"O  Love  that  wilt  not  let  me  go, 

I  rest  my  weary  soul  in  Thee; 
I  give  Thee  back  the  life  I  owe, 
That  in  Thine  ocean  depths  its  flow 

May  richer,  fuller  be. 
80 


GIVING  OF  THE  SELF 

"O  Light  that  followest  all  my  way, 
I  yield  my  flickering  torch  to  Thee; 
My  heart  restores  its  borrowed  ray, 
That  in  Thy  sunshine's  blaze  its  day 
May  brighter,  fairer  be. 

"O  Joy  that  seekest  me  through  pain, 

I  cannot  close  my  heart  to  Thee; 
I  trace  the  rainbow  through  the  rain, 
And  feel  the  promise  is  not  vain 
That  morn  shall  tearless  be. 

"O  Cross  that  liftest  up  my  head, 
I  dare  not  ask  to  fly  from  Thee; 

I  lay  in  dust  life's  glory  dead, 

And  from  the  ground  there  blossoms  red 
Life  that  shall  endless  be." 


81 


PART  II 

DEEPENING    THE   FRIEND- 
SHIP 


CHRISTIAN  STANDARDS 


XV.  THE  QUALITIES  OF  THE 
TRUE  FRIEND  AS  SEEN  BY 
CHRIST 

|N  any  discussion  of  friend- 
ship that  aims  to  bring 
out  its  higher  significance, 
it  would  be  quite  unpar- 
donable to  neglect  the  two 
greatest  portrayals  of  the 
loving  life  that  the  world 
has  seen — Christ's  and  Paul's.  For  no 
friendship  can  reach  its  highest  attainment 
that  falls  below  the  ideals  of  the  Beatitudes 
and  of  the  thirteenth  of  First  Corinthians. 
In  the  Beatitudes  Christ  is  giving  the 
basic  qualities  of  character,  of  influence, 
and  of  happiness — those  qualities  that  he 
believes  must  characterize  every  man  who 
is  to  be  a  true  citizen  of  "the  civilization 
of  the  brotherly  man."  These  qualities  of 
the  Beatitudes,  as  basic  qualities,  have  an 
indispensable  contribution  to  make  in  every 
personal  relation.  For  their  possession 
means,  inevitably,  that  one  has  a  better 
self  to  give  in  friendship,  is  better  able  to 
receive  from  his  friend,  better  able  to  call 
out  the  best  in  his  friend,  and  has  better 
learned  the  secrets  of  an  increasing  joy  in 
personal  life.  Every  one  of  these  qualities 


FRIENDSHIP 

will  make  a  friendship  richer;  the  lack  of 
any  one  will  detract  from  its  strength  and 
beauty. 

Moreover,  since  Christ  holds  that  the 
all-embracing  virtue  is  love,  he  thinks  of 
these  qualities  as  elements  of  that  love,  or 
steps  of  progress  toward  love's  culminat- 
ing quality  of  courageous  self-sacrifice. 
Whether,  therefore,  these  qualities  are 
regarded  as  basic  qualities  of  character, 
influence,  and  happiness,  as  elements  of  the 
loving  life,  or  as  steps  toward  an  ideal, 
self-giving  love,  the  Beatitudes  are,  in  any 
case,  Christ's  statement  of  the  fundamental 
qualities  of  a  true  friend,  and  their  sug- 
gestions are  needed  in  all  true  personal  rela- 
tions; and  they  deserve  brief  individual 
consideration. 

In  other  words,  it  may  be  said  that 
Christ  here  contends  that  the  true  friend 
will  be  characteristically  teachable,  peni- 
tent, self-controlled,  genuinely  earnest  in 
the  pursuit  of  the  highest,  sympathetic 
with  men,  reverent  toward  men,  promoting 
love  among  men,  sacrificing  for  men.  This 
is  no  chance  list  of  qualities.  Every  one  is 
essential  to  a  true  friendship. 

And  the  life  of  the  true  friend  is  natu- 


QUALITIES  OF  THE  TRUE  FRIEND 

rally  characterized  first  of  all  as  teachable, 
humble,  open-minded. 

For  no  quality  so  certainly  assures  that 
steady  growth,  without  which,  as  we  have 
seen,  a  constantly  enriching  friendship  is 
impossible.  A  genuine  friend  must  ever 
desire  to  have  a  worthy  self  to  give  in  his 
friendship,  and  a  self  continually  enlarging 
and  enriching.  For  that  end,  the  condi- 
tions of  growth  must  be  steadily  fulfilled; 
and  no  condition  is  so  imperative  as  that 
of  the  teachable,  open-minded  spirit. 

The  very  idea  of  a  worthy  friendship 
implies  that  the  friends  need  and  desire 
each  other;  are  sure  that  each  has  much  to 
give  to  the  other;  and  so  are  continuously 
receptive  and  eager  for  the  other's  gift. 
There  can  be  no  desire  in  a  true  personal 
relation  simply  to  force  the  ideas  of  one 
on  the  other.  Each  is  ready  to  take  sug- 
gestions from  the  other,  and  to  enter  into 
the  other's  point  of  view,  and  to  be  grate- 
ful for  the  enlargement  of  his  own  experi- 
ence and  vision  which  may  so  come.  The 
teachable  spirit,  therefore,  is  essential,  if 
one  is  to  get  the  most  in  any  personal 
relation.  Unteachableness  shuts  one  off 
from  his  friend's  best  gift. 


FRIENDSHIP 

Moreover,  conceit  on  my  part  is  likely 
to  call  out  the  unreceptive  attitude  in  my 
friend,  and  so  to  make  it  impossible  for  me 
to  do  for  him  what  I  would. 

The  continuing  joy  in  personal  relation, 
too,  must  depend,  in  no  small  part,  on  the 
certainty  that  the  friendship  is  a  deepening 
and  increasingly  rewarding  one.  And  this 
can  only  be  true  where  conditions  are  pres- 
ent for  the  steady  growth  of  each.  The 
conceited,  arrogant,  domineering  spirit, 
thus,  tends  to  spoil  the  friendly  relation 
in  every  aspect  of  it,  whether  one  is  think- 
ing of  what  the  friendship  may  mean  in 
character,  or  in  influence,  or  in  happiness. 
Surely  humility  is  an  essential  quality  of 
the  true  friend. 

The  penitent  spirit,  too,  the  quality  of 
the  second  beatitude, — the  spirit  that  is 
ready  frankly  to  recognize  its  own  failures 
and  to  face  and  conquer  them — grows  im- 
mediately out  of  the  teachable  spirit.  It 
is  ready  to  see  its  fault,  to  regret  it, 
and  to  forsake  it.  It  is  hardly  possible  to 
have  a  truly  adjusted  personal  relation 
to  another,  where  this  frank,  clear  spirit 
of  penitence  is  wanting.  The  secret,  lower 
attitude  taken  in  some  other  relation  clouds 
90 


inevitably  the  friendship  with  one  of 
higher  spirit.  Persistent  sensitiveness  of 
conscience  can  alone  keep  one's  personal 
relations  sensitively  true  and  fine.  One  has 
not  waked  up  to  the  significance  of  a  high 
friendship,  who  does  not  feel  the  ambition 
to  bring  to  it  his  best  self;  in  whom  the 
friendship  does  not  become  the  motive  for 
laying  off  all  that  is  unworthy.  A  genuine 
love,  thus,  inevitably  provokes  to  penitence, 
that  one  may  be  worthy  of  the  high  friend- 
ship on  which  he  has  entered. 

A  friendship  is  immediately  lowered,  in 
which  the  friends  settle  back  contentedly 
upon  their  lower  selves,  or  upon  their 
present  attainment.  This  gives  only  the 
prospect  of  a  further  steady  lowering. 
There  must  be  genuine  penitence  for  past 
unworthiness,  the  earnest  desire  for  a  new 
and  better  man,  if  better  things  are  in 
store  in  the  friendship  itself.  No  other 
attitude  is  ever  safe,  if  friendship  is  to 
grow,  to  strengthen,  and  to  better.  Only 
this  penitent  spirit,  too,  will  make  one 
patient,  and  not  intolerant  with  the  faults 
of  his  friend,  at  the  same  time  that  he 
does  not  foster  them.  Only  this  spirit  is 
likely  to  enable  one  to  help  his  friend  out 

91 


FRIENDSHIP 

of  his  faults ;  a  condition  of  constant  exas- 
peration is  else  likely  to  ensue.  The  peni- 
tent spirit  is  fundamental  m  friendship. 

And  friendship  needs,  not  less,  the  self- 
control  of  meekness.  Perhaps  there  is  no 
better  definition  of  meekness  than  that  of 
Beecher,  who  says,  "It  is  the  best  side  of 
a  man,  under  provocation  maintaining 
itself  in  the  best  mood,  and  controlling  all 
men."  This  is  the  quality  that  puts  a  man 
in  possession  of  himself,  and  enables  him 
to  use  all  his  resources,  all  his  opportuni- 
ties, to  the  full,  and  therefore  to  be  his  full 
self  in  his  relation  to  his  friend,  to  make 
friendship  count  at  every  point,  and  in 
every  situation.  It  is  in  truth  a  kingly 
quality,  as  it  has  been  called. 

And  no  quality  is  more  essential  in  a 
personal  relation,  none  has  a  larger  serv- 
ice to  render  at  the  critical  times  in  these 
relations.  How  many  friendships  have 
been  maimed  or  destroyed  because  of  its 
lack!  Bickerings  and  mutual  recrimina- 
tions become  impossible,  when  both  friends 
are  humble,  penitent,  and  self-controlled. 

The  self-control  of  meekness,  thus, 
makes  certain  that  no  brute  qualities  can 
come  in  to  spoil  the  friendship.  And  it 
92 


QUALITIES  OF  THE  TRUE  FRIEND 

makes  possible  great  achievement  for  both. 

Two  self-mastered  spirits,  in  the  mood 
of  self-mastery,  can  be,  and  count,  and 
enjoy,  in  all  their  relations,  what  could  not 
otherwise  be  possible.  To  take  the  road 
of  "letting  oneself  go,"  just  because  it  is 
in  the  direction  of  insanity  and  of  brute- 
hood,  ultimately  limits,  not  enlarges,  even 
the  joy  of  the  relation;  for  it  finally  secures 
only  self-contempt,  and  mutual  contempt, 
however  disguised.  The  pleasure  that  one 
may  take  with  full  self-approval  has  a 
quality  that  no  illicit  ecstasy  can  match, 
since  this  has  its  bitter  sting  of  self-con- 
tempt; for  we  know  that  the  partial,  the 
lower,  the  selfish,  has  prevailed,  and  that 
we  have  not  mastered  our  pleasures,  but 
our  pleasures  have  mastered  us.  Even  the 
joy  of  friendship  thus  demands  "the  soul 
in  the  majesty  of  self-possession."  Self- 
control  is,  then,  fundamental  to  friendship. 

And  a  penitent  and  self-mastered  spirit 
will  naturally  develop,  as  has  been  already 
implied,  persistent  eagerness  for  the  best, 
Christ's  "hungering  and  thirsting  for  right- 
eousness." The  true  man  wants  real 
attainment,  not  the  name  of  it.  He  wants 
to  be  and  to  do  more,  not  simply  to  have 

93 


FRIENDSHIP 

his  -own  way.  He  wants  the  absolutely 
right  thing  in  this  personal  relation  to  his 
friend,  and  in  all;  and  he  can't  help,  there- 
fore, being  in  just  so  far  reasonable,  candid, 
honest,  and  faithful.  He  will  be  ambi- 
tious for  the  utmost  in  the  friendship  in 
which  he  finds  himself.  He  must  say, 
"Less  than  this  persistent  eagerness  for 
the  best  would  not  be  worthy  of  the  self  I 
would  bring;  less  than  this  would  not  be 
worthy  of  my  friend.  I  am  failing  to  be 
what  I  ought  to  be  in  this  relation,  if  this 
is  not  true."  A  high  friendship  should 
insure  that,  with  the  progress  of  the  days, 
each  brings  to  the  other  a  better,  stronger, 
higher,  richer  self.  Nothing  else  really 
makes  the  friendship  what  it  ought  to  be. 
A  high  friendship,  thus,  requires  great  am- 
bitions for  growth  into  the  best. 

It  would  seem  hardly  to  need  saying  that 
a  true  friend  will  be  merciful,  sympathetic 
with  his  friend.  For  the  very  foundation 
of  any  friendship  must  be  at  least  a  partial 
sympathy.  Real  sympathy  sees  the  point 
of  view  of  the  other,  appreciates  his  situa- 
tion, understands  his  struggle.  It  has 
leisure  from  itself,  is  ready  to  take  the 
time  to  give  the  thought  and  attention 
94 


QUALITIES  OF  THE  TRUE  FRIEND 

necessary,  to  use  its  imagination  in  the 
understanding  of  its  friend.  And  the 
highest  are  ever  the  most  merciful,  because 
they  judge  their  friends  out  of  their  own 
experience  of  struggle.  They  know  what 
honest  endeavor  means,  and  recognize  the 
earnest  fight  where  victory  may  seem  still 
unachieved. 

Elsewhere  in  his  teaching,  Christ  shows 
that  a  true  mercy  toward  another  seems  to 
him  to  forbid  not  simply  uncharitable 
judgment,  but  the  attitude  of  judging  at 
all.  A  friend  is  the  brother,  side  by  side 
with  his  friend;  not  the  judge  set  above 
him.  The  close  relations  of  intimate 
friendship  call  everywhere  for  this  quality 
of  inner  mercy,  for  willingness  to  enter 
faithfully  and  understandingly  into  the 
experience  of  others,  for  the  attitude  not  of 
stern  judgment,  but  of  tender  mercy.  How 
can  friendship  exist  at  all  without  such 
sympathy?  Even  in  the  closest  relations 
of  life,  we  are  to  remember  the  call  to  be 
"pitiful,"  to  be  "courteous,"  to  be  merciful 
in  the  inner  spirit.  Indeed,  it  is  hardly 
too  much  to  say  that  friendship  shows  itself 
in  nothing  more  than  in  a  deepening,  almost 
unconscious,  silent  understanding  and  syn> 

95 


pathy.  You  have  entered  into  your  friend's 
life  and  thought  and  experience;  you  feel 
with  him.  "Oh,  the  comfort — the  inex- 
pressible comfort  of  feeling  safe  with  a 
person — having  neither  to  weigh  thoughts 
nor  measure  words,  but  pouring  them  all 
right  out,  just  as  they  are,  chaff  and  grain 
together;  certain  that  a  faithful  hand  will 
take  and  sift  them,  keep  what  is  worth 
keeping  and  with  the  breath  of  kindness 
blow  the  rest  away." 

Christ  indicates,  also,  that  the  true 
friend  will  be  characterized  by  purity  in 
heart, — that  inner  sense  of  the  value  and 
sacredness  of  the  person  of  oneself  and  of 
others,  that  can  hold  in  check  even  funda- 
mental passions.  This  steady  recognition 
of  the  other,  as  in  himself  a  child  of  God, 
holy  and  priceless,  not  to  be  estimated  as 
anything  less,  and  never  to  be  used  as  a 
mere  means  to  an  end,  is  essential  to  the 
highest  friendship. 

It  is  perhaps  not  too  much  to  say,  as  will 
be  later  developed,  that  this  spirit  indicates 
the  deepest  condition  of  all  in  high  per- 
sonal relations.  For  it  seems  to  carry  with 
it  the  fulfilment  of  all  other  conditions. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  spirit  of  contempt 
96 


QUALITIES  OF  THE  TRUE  FRIEND 

is  fatal  to  any  endurable  personal  relations 
to  another,  and  every  approach  to  this 
spirit  is  an  obstacle  to  a  bettering  relation. 
It  is  the  worst  of  mistakes,  therefore,  to 
suppose  that,  as  one's  friendships  become 
more  intimate,  they  may  become  less  truly 
reverent.  The  intimacy  of  friendship  is 
not  measured  by  the  number  of  privacies 
insolently  invaded;  and  even  the  closest 
life  relation  may  not  spare  the  spirit  of 
genuine  respect  and  deference.  The  real 
friend  will  not  demand ;  he  only  asks.  The 
very  highest  fruit  of  friendship  can  hardly 
be  withheld  from  the  genuinely  reverent 
spirit,  whereas  every  trace  of  contempt 
embitters  and  degrades. 

The  disciple  of  the  loving  life,  Jesus  is 
certain  also,  will  be  a  peacemaker.  And 
in  every  personal  relation  it  is  not  enough 
that  one  should  merely  keep  the  peace;  he 
must  help  to  make  it,  must  steadily  pro- 
mote it.  It  is  not  enough  that  one  should 
avoid,  in  his  personal  relations,  the  pro- 
voking attitude,  the  nagging  and  annoying 
spirit;  there  must  be  a  definite  seeking  of 
those  things  that  make  for  peace, — the 
seeking  of  agreements,  the  seeking  sympa- 
thetically to  understand,  the  seeking  to  see 
G  97 


FRIENDSHIP 

the  other's  point  of  view,  rather  than  to 
make  a  point  against  him.  The  peace- 
maker brings  in  the  spirit  of  love;  he 
recognizes  that  ultimately  there  is  nothing 
that  can  be  done  with  any  man  but  to  love 
him.  The  final  service  of  the  best  labors 
of  men  has  even  been  that  they  have  loved 
men  into  their  own  best.  Nothing  is  so 
powerful  in  the  realm  of  personal  relations 
as  such  an  unconquerable  love. 

And  the  friendly  spirit  must  ultimately 
be  a  self -sacrificing  spirit,  for  this  is,  after 
all,  only  love  itself  at  its  highest;  it  is  only 
that  completest  giving  of  self  which  is  the 
very  essence  of  love.  It  is  the  climax  and 
goal  of  all  the  other  qualities,  and  the 
quality  into  which,  in  turn,  they  naturally 
come.  But  it  is  not  a  spirit  to  be  reserved 
simply  for  great  occasions.  Our  common 
friendships  need,  even  more,  that  this  spirit 
should  be  shown  in  small  things  and  in 
what  seem  slight  exigencies.  As  Black 
puts  it,  "Attention  to  detail  is  the  secret  of 
success  in  every  sphere  of  life,  and  little 
kindnesses,  little  acts  of  considerateness, 
little  appreciations,  little  confidences,  are 
all  that  most  of  us  are  called  upon  to  per- 
form, but  they  are  all  that  are  needed  to 
98 


QUALITIES  OF  THE  TRUE  FRIEND 

keep  a  friendship  sweet."1  This  willing- 
ness to  sacrifice  in  little  things  is  indeed  the 
one  incontestable  proof  of  a  persistent  love. 
Nor  is  there  any  way  by  which  friendship 
may  be  so  certainly  deepened  as  by  way  of 
mutual  self-sacrifice.  A  love  that  is  not 
ready  for  persistent,  courageous  self-sacri- 
fice is  not  adequate  to  the  demands  of  a 
friendship  of  the  highest  order. 

It  is  impossible  to  review  these  qualities 
for  which  Christ  calls  in  the  Beatitudes, 
and  not  see  that  where  these  qualities  are 
present,  a  worthy  and  steadily  growing 
friendship  is  certain.  Where  friends  are 
teachable,  quick  to  recognize  their  own 
defects,  having  the  meekness  of  self-con- 
trol, and  persistent  eagerness  for  the  best 
that  friendship  may  bring;  where  inner 
sympathy  and  deep  reverence  for  the  per- 
son of  themselves  and  others  are  present; 
where  each  is  a  promoter  of  peace,  and 
each  is  ready  to  sacrifice  for  the  other — 
there  is  a  friendship  that  it  is  hardly  pos- 
sible to  wreck.  It  has  something  of  the 
eternity  of  the  nature  of  God  himself. 
There  is  no  personal  relation  of  any  kind 
in  the  life  of  any  man  where  these  great 

1  Friendship,  p.  49. 

99 


qualities  have  not  their  peculiar  and  ines- 
timable contribution  to  make.  Even  where 
they  are  found  in  only  one  person  in  the 
relation,  they  can  hardly  help  proving  con- 
tagious, if  the  person  who  seeks  to  embody 
these  qualities  does  not  allow  himself  to  be 
provoked  out  of  them. 

And  these  qualities  which  are  so  vital  in 
our  relations  to  our  fellow  men,  are  not 
less  vital  in  our  relations  to  God,  as  the 
promises  of  the  Beatitudes  make  clear. 
And  to  come  into  these  qualities  is  to  come 
into  the  life  of  love,  and  that  is  to  come 
into  the  sharing  of  God's  own  life.  We 
find  God  in  these  true  relations  to  others. 

And  as  the  great  road  to  character  is 
always  the  way  of  personal  association 
with  the  best,  so  there  is  no  way  so  certain 
into  the  possession  of  these  qualities  as 
staying  in  the  atmosphere  of  a  life  like 
Christ's  that  embodies  them.  In  such  re- 
sponse to  his  spirit,  the  relation  to  God 
himself  steadily  deepens.  "Every  one  that 
loveth  is  begotten  of  God  and  knoweth 
God."  And  no  one  has  described  more 
accurately  than  Christ,  in  the  Beatitudes, 
the  elements  of  the  loving  life, — the  basic 
qualities  in  friendship. 
100 


XVI.     PAUL'S    SKETCH    OF    THE 
FRIENDLY  LIFE 

It  is  worth  remembering  that  Paul's  im- 
mortal sketch  of  the  friendly  life  is  no 
mere  literary  tour  de  force,  but  stands  in 
the  midst  of  one  of  the  most  concrete  and 
practical  of  his  writings,  as  the  natural  out- 
come of  all  that  has  preceded.  Because 
the  grace  of  God  had  wrought  out  this 
spirit,  which  he  attempts  to  describe,  in  his 
own  heart,  Paul  could  be  so  undaunted,  so 
hopeful,  so  divinely  patient,  so  faithful  in 
his  dealing  with  his  Corinthian  friends. 
This  famous  thirteenth  chapter  is  thus  at 
once  a  sketch  of  their  needs,  and,  to  no 
small  degree,  of  his  own  life. 

When  compared  with  the  Beatitudes, 
this  chapter  is  a  freer  sketch  of  the  loving 
life,  with  emphases  called  out  by  the  special 
circumstances,  in  an  order  psychological 
rather  than  logical;  but,  because  fitting  so 
perfectly  the  circumstances  for  which  Paul 
wrote,  fitting  us  all. 

The  thought  of  the  chapter  is  wrought 
into  a  close  unity.  In  his  praise  of  love 
Paul  first  asserts  the  worthlessness  of  all 
spiritual  gifts  without  love,  then  character- 
izes love,  and  finally  shows  how,  out  of 

101 


FRIENDSHIP 

such  characteristics,  it  must  follow  that  love 
is  the  one  eternal  thing. 

For  Paul,  as  for  Christ,  there  is  no 
possible  discharge  from  the  duty  of  love, 
no  substitute  for  it.  Other  things,  even 
so-called  spiritual  gifts,  are  not  only  no  sub- 
stitutes, but  themselves  are  worthless  with- 
out love.  No  speaking  with  tongues,  with 
its  accompanying  ecstatic  emotional  state — 
most  highly  prized  of  all  the  spiritual  gifts 
of  his  time — is  of  any  value  without  genu- 
ine love.  No  mystery-solving  knowledge, 
no  wonder-working  faith  can  possibly 
profit,  if  there  is  not  love  in  the  life.  No 
magnificent  acts  of  liberality,  Paul  con- 
tinues, no  heights  of  ascetic  torture,  even 
unto  death,  without  love,  are  of  the  slight- 
est avail.  God's  whole  redemption  is  to  a 
life  like  his  own,  to  sharing  his  life;  and 
that  life  is  love. 

From  this  insistence  that  love  is  the  one 
absolute  essential,  Paul  then  turns  to  that 
which  specially  concerns  us, — his  wonder- 
ful characterization  of  the  loving  life,  in 
the  central  verses  of  this  great  chapter.  In 
this  characterization  there  is  to  be  noted  a 
fivefold  grouping  of  the  qualities,  and  also 
how  naturally,  by  association  of  ideas,  one 

IO2 


PAUL'S   SKETCH  OF  FRIENDLY  LIFE 

quality  suggests  the  next.  The  order,  as 
already  noted,  is  psychological  rather  than 
logical. 

Paul  begins  with  two  positive  qualities, 
"Love  is  long-suffering,  and  kind;"  and 
out  of  these  all  the  other  qualities  may  be 
said  to  grow. 

A  second,  consequent,  group  consists  of 
four  negative  and  closely  related  charac- 
teristics: "Love  is  never  envious,  never 
boastful,  never  conceited,  never  behaves 
unbecomingly." 

A  third  group  of  three  characteristics 
follows  naturally :  "Love  is  never  self-seek- 
ing, never  provoked,  never  reckons  up  her 
wrongs." 

The  fourth  step  in  his  praise  of  love  is 
found  in  the  two  qualities:  "Love  never 
rejoices  at  evil,  but  rejoices  in  the  triumph 
of  Truth." 

And  there  follows,  in  the  fifth  place,  as 
the  result  of  all:  "Love  bears  with  all 
things,"  and  therefore  is  "ever  trustful, 
ever  hopeful,  ever  patient." 

Such  a  love,  the  chapter  naturally  con- 
cludes, "never  fails."  It  is  equal  to  all 
circumstances,  at  all  times,  belongs  to  the 
eternal  things  of  God. 

103 


FRIENDSHIP 

The  experience  which  Paul  had  had  with 
the  Corinthians  could  hardly  fail  to  sug- 
gest first  of  all  that  a  true  friend,  who 
means  to  be  faithful  to  the  very  end  in 
bringing  his  friend  through  to  his  absolute 
best,  must  be  long-suffering,  infinitely  pa- 
tient; must  have  a  love  that  simply  will 
not  let  the  other  go,  that  bears  up  against 
persistent  injury,  and  that  does  not  merely 
endure,  but  is  positively  kind.  There  is  a 
martyr-like  endurance  often  put  on  by 
those  who  are  themselves  in  the  wrong, 
that  is  not  only  immeasurably  exasperating 
in  any  professed  friend,  but  betrays  a  well- 
nigh  hopeless  condition,  that  makes  a  satis- 
fying friendship  impossible.  It  is  no  such 
long-suffering  that  Paul  praises  as  a  quality 
of  love.  Paul  elsewhere  urges  those  to 
whom  he  writes  to  forgive,  even  as  God 
for  Christ's  sake  has  forgiven  them;  and 
it  is  plain  that  the  one  adequate  revelation 
of  the  long-suffering  and  kindness  of  which 
he  here  speaks,  is  that  shown  in  God's  own 
seeking  of  us  in  Christ.  Paul  himself 
made  much  of  this  simple  persistent  kind- 
ness, and  often  revealed  it.  The  thought- 
ful kindness  of  his  letters,  and  the  delicacy 
of  their  feeling,  illustrate  the  qualities  for 
104 


PAUL'S   SKETCH  OF  FRIENDLY  LIFE 

which  he  here  calls  as  characterizing  first 
of  all  the  truly  loving  life.  Love  is  long- 
suffering,  and  positively,  practically,  per- 
sistently, thoughtfully,  attentively  kind. 
Love  blossoms  out  in  inevitable  countless 
kindnesses. 

And  Paul  is  certain  that,  in  proportion 
as  one  really  loves,  he  cannot  envy.  Envy 
has  no  place  in  a  genuine  friendship.  If 
one  really  loves  another,  he  will  begrudge 
him  no  good,  but  he  would  rather  bestow 
more  if  he  could.  The  envious  spirit  can- 
not be  kind,  and  the  really  kind  spirit 
cannot  be  envious.  And  because  one  loves 
he  will  not  boast.  What  he  might  say  in 
boasting  might  be  true,  but  he  will  not  run 
the  risk  of  hurting  another.  Love  holds 
him  back  from  this  self-vaunting.  He  has 
no  wish  to  vaunt  himself  over  another,  or 
to  gloat  over  the  other's  supposed  lower 
estate.  As  love  does  not  envy,  it  will  feel 
no  need  to  boast.  And  in  its  thorough 
appreciation  of  its  friend  it  will  be  free 
from  conceit,  not  puffed  up.  Conceit 
implies  being  so  constantly  occupied  with 
the  thought  of  oneself  as  not  to  be  able  to 
recognize  others'  worth  and  claims.  The 
"puffed  up"  of  the  old  version  is  very  sug- 

105 


FRIENDSHIP 

gestlve,  as  indicating  the  danger  of  getting 
uplifted  over  comparatively  slight  things. 
And  he  who  is  not  self-conceited,  self- 
centered,  and  self-satisfied,  will  not  behave 
unbecomingly.  For  the  conceited  man,  even 
with  much  intended  kindness,  is  constantly 
sinning  against  love.  He  is  quite  uncon- 
sciously behaving  unbecomingly,  taking  all 
done  for  him  as  of  right  and  for  granted, 
naively  claiming  everything,  perfectly 
ready  to  advise  those  of  far  more  wisdom 
and  experience,  unable  to  see  what  is  really 
due  to  others,  and  having  no  power  to  grow 
in  loving  ministry,  because  already  satisfied. 
The  man  that  is  puffed  up  with  his  own 
conceit  is  in  danger,  also,  of  feeding  on 
praise,  of  getting  where  he  must  have  it, 
and  where,  therefore,  he  indirectly  seeks  it, 
of  being  able  to  talk  of  nothing  but  himself 
and  his  own  doings.  Conceit  is  forgetful 
of  the  needs  and  rights  of  others,  is  not 
willing  to  give  the  time  and  thought  neces- 
sary to  enter  sympathetically  into  the 
thoughts  and  plans  and  work  of  others, 
but  must  hurry  back  to  the  thought  and 
the  talk  of  its  own  plans.  If  one's  work 
has  some  real  importance,  there  is  all  the 
greater  danger  of  this  absorbing  selfish- 
106 


PAUL'S   SKETCH  OF  FRIENDLY  LIFE 

ness ;  and  yet  the  greatest  of  all  work  is  to 
love. 

These  four  characteristics  of  love,  there- 
fore, belong  together,  and  naturally  follow 
one  another.  For  the  envious  man  is  the 
boastful  man;  and  the  boastful,  conceited; 
and  the  conceited  makes  a  fool  of  himself. 

And  Paul  adds  to  his  praise  of  love, 
"Love  seeketh  not  its  own;  is  not  pro- 
yoked;  taketh  not  account  of  evil."  For 
the  unseemly  behavior  of  which  he  has  just 
spoken,  reaches  its  height  in  a  complete 
self-seeking,  in  its  countless  forms.  Paul 
thus  sets  the  loving  life  over  against  the 
self-conscious,  the  self -centered,  the  self- 
absorbed,  the  self-seeking  life.  The  spirit 
that  advertises  and  pushes  itself  and  jostles 
others  aside  is  the  very  antithesis,  in  Paul's 
thought,  of  the  loving  spirit.  Love  loses 
itself  in  its  object,  seeks  his  good,  his  hap- 
piness, and  forgets  itself.  It  finds  its  own 
greatest  happiness  in  its  sacrifices  for  love's 
sake. 

And  because  it  seeks  not  its  own,  it  is 
not  provoked.  It  is  the  man  who  has  con- 
stantly in  mind  his  own  precious  self,  his 
own  dignity,  and  is  wrapped  up  in  himself, 
who  feels  all  the  slights,  who  feels  the  need 

107 


FRIENDSHIP 

of  always  standing  on  his  dignity,  who 
"carries,"  in  our  common  phrase,  "a  chip 
on  his  shoulder,"  and  "bristles  up"  at 
once.  And  so  Paul  is  virtually  suggesting 
to  the  Corinthians,  "If  you  had  been  less 
selfish  and  self-centered,  you  would  have 
been  less  sensitive,  and  little  petty  things 
would  have  affected  you  less;  it  is  the  fact 
that  you  are  so  self-seeking  that  makes  you 
so  easy  to  take  offense."  This  not  being 
provoked  is  Drummond's  characteristic  of 
"good  temper,"  which  is  not  only  no  small 
personal  achievement,  but  has  a  great  con- 
tribution to  make  to  the  happiness  of  oth- 
ers ;  for  the  spirit  that  is  not  provoked  does 
not  need  constantly  to  be  smoothed  down. 
With  such  a  person  one  does  not  need  to 
watch  every  word  and  act,  for  fear  of 
offense.  How  much  one  "touchy"  person 
can  do  to  spoil  a  gathering  or  any  personal 
relation;  how  much  one  of  imperturbable 
good  temper  can  do  to  make  all  go 
smoothly ! 

And  the  spirit  that  is  not  provoked  will 
also  naturally  be  unsuspicious,  taking  not 
account  of  evil;  or,  as  one  has  put  it,  "love 
does  not  reckon  up  her  wrongs,"  does  not 
dwell  on,  and  make  much  of,  and  recapitu- 
108 


late  them.  Rather,  it  argues  as  to  some 
wrong:  "It  is  a  small  matter  at  the  most. 
It  is  better  simply  to  let  it  go.  Probably  no 
offense  was  meant,  and  I  will  give  the  per- 
son the  benefit  of  the  doubt.  There  is  no 
reason,  in  any  case,  why  I  should  be  the 
sole  one  considered.  Moreover,  it  is  un- 
worthy of  me  to  dwell  on  it,  even  if  the 
slight  was  intended;  for  is  it  not  a  man's 
glory  to  pass  over  a  fault?"  The  other 
tendency  gives  a  jaundiced  vision,  and 
takes  the  best  out  of  life.  Filling  one's 
memory  with  the  petty  meannesses  of 
other  men  is  a  poor  way  to  get  material  for 
a  large,  rich  life,  or  for  any  friendship. 
Drop  the  thought  of  a  slight  as  soon  as  you 
can.  Don't  cultivate  a  good  memory  for 
wrongs  and  slights. 

The  natural  result  of  dwelling  on  wrongs 
is  either  to  gloat  over  the  fall  of  others,  or 
to  justify  any  kind  of  opposition  to  them. 
And  this  result  is  indicated  in  Paul's  next 
characterization  of  love,  as  "rejoicing  not 
in  unrighteousness;"  or,  as  it  has  been 
translated,  "having  no  sympathy  with 
deceit." 

On  the  one  hand,  then,  the  connection 
may  be  that  in  the  reckoning  up  of  one's 

109 


FRIENDSHIP 

wrongs,  one  may  be  tempted  to  be  well- 
nigh  glad  of  some  new  fault  discovered  in 
the  other  to  gloat  over  and  talk  over,  to 
justify  one's  prejudiced  opinion  and  hate 
and  opposition.  The  faults  of  one's  op- 
posers  are  likely  to  become  one's  stock  in 
trade.  But  if  one  really  loved,  every  dis- 
covery of  unrighteousness  would  be  a  grief 
and  pain,  and  no  cause  for  rejoicing. 

But  Paul's  thought  may  be,  also,  that 
the  loving  spirit  has  no  sympathy  with  any 
deceit,  in  any  tricky  or  unfair  methods  of 
winning  one's  way.  As  it  does  not  reckon 
up  the  wrongs  of  another,  so  also,  on  its 
side,  it  approves  of  no  questionable  means 
of  getting  one's  end,  and  will  be  party  to 
none,  but  has  full  sympathy  only  with  the 
true,  and  open,  and  square.  If  this  is  the 
thought,  Paul  probably  has  in  mind  the  un- 
derhanded ways  of  partisan  strife,  the 
low-lived  methods  into  which  one  may 
allow  himself  to  be  betrayed  when  he  gets 
into  factional  contentions.  The  truly  lov- 
ing spirit  has  no  sympathy  with  deceit,  but 
has  full  sympathy  with  the  truth,  "rejoices 
with  the  truth."  Love,  real  love,  needs  no 
underhanded  methods  and  will  resort  to 
none  itself,  and  will  approve  of  none  in 
no 


PAUL'S  SKETCH  OF  FRIENDLY  LIFE 

others,  even  in  its  own  party,  but  rejoices 
only  "in  the  triumph  of  Truth." 

A  love  thus  free  from  the  partisan  spirit, 
that  seeks  not  a  selfish  triumph,  but  the 
triumph  of  truth  and  love,  can  hardly  fail 
to  deserve  Paul's  further  characterization, 
that  it  "bears  with  all  things,"  or,  bears 
up  against  all  things,  is  proof  against  all. 
It  is  equal  to  any  emergency,  because  it 
loves  and  always  loves;  it  never  gives  up. 
It  is  "always  trustful,  always  hopeful,  al- 
ways patient." 

A  love  that  is  proof  against  all  must  be 
always  trustful;  for  an  abiding  love 
grounds  in  trust.  There  can  be  no  per- 
sistent, glad  sacrifice  for  men  without  faith 
in  men,  in  their  possibilities,  in  their  future. 
A  love  that  abides  must  trust.  And  it  is 
only  such  trust,  too,  that  can  get  the  best 
from  men.  A  cynical  spirit  cannot  do 
much  for  men  or  with  men.  He  who 
would  greatly  serve  men,  or  greatly  lead 
them  in  a  great  cause,  must  believe  in  them. 
Here,  again,  Christ  is  the  great  exemplar. 
He  believes  in  men,  builds  on  them,  com- 
mits to  them  the  most  precious  interests  of 
his  kingdom.  The  love  that  beareth  all 
things  is  always  trustful.  The  full  pos- 

II II 


FRIENDSHIP 

sibilitles  of  friendship  are  to  be  only  so 
achieved. 

And  because  trustful,  love  is  always 
hopeful.  Such  hope  grows  directly  out  of 
belief  in  men  and  in  their  possibilities.  It 
looks  always  for  something  better  to  come. 
It  expects  growth,  is  confident  of  new 
developments,  keeps  its  hope  as  to  men, 
and  it  persists  in  its  loving  service,  because 
of  its  undying  hope. 

The  enduring  love  is,  thus,  once  more, 
always  patient.  And  with  this  closing  char- 
acteristic, Paul  returns  in  his  praise  of  love, 
like  perfect  music  to  its  first  note,  to  the 
long-suffering  with  which  he  began.  The 
spirit  of  complaint  in  any  personal  relation 
is  easy  enough;  but  the  love  that  can  con- 
quer all  must  be  able  to  endure,  must  be 
always  patient.  No  treatment  can  break 
down  this  love  of  which  Paul  speaks;  it  still 
holds  on;  bears  with  everything;  and 
finally  wins,  most  of  all  on  this  very 
account.  Its  triumph  is  like  the  triumph 
of  God  himself,  in  the  seeking,  suffering 
love  of  Christ  that  never  gives  men  up. 

A  love  so  characterized,  Paul  feels,  can- 
not be  temporary.  Prophecies  will  be  done 
away,  tongues  cease,  and  knowledge  be- 
112 


PAUL'S   SKETCH  OF  FRIENDLY  LIFE 

come  out  of  date;  but  such  love  can  never 
fail.  It  is  of  the  very  nature  of  the  Eter- 
nal, the  one  abiding  thing;  for  no  time  can 
come  when  love  is  not  of  the  very  essence 
of  life.  In  those  abiding  personal  rela- 
tions, in  the  fulfilment  of  which  life  itself 
consists,  faith  will  always  be  needed, — 
faith  in  God  and  in  man.  And  hope  there 
will  always  be, — the  thought  of  eternal 
growth  for  oneself  and  for  others,  the  in- 
spiration of  a  constantly  expanding  life 
that  can  never  exhaust  the  riches  of  God's 
own  being.  And  love  there  must  always 
be;  and  of  these  three  ever-abiding  things, 
— faith,  hope,  and  love — love  is  the  great- 
est of  all,  for  it  really  includes  both  faith 
and  hope,  as  Paul  has  himself  already  de- 
clared in  the  seventh  verse  of  the  chapter. 
God's  love  is  for  Paul,  as  plainly  as  for 
John,  the  source  of  all.  "We  love  because 
he  first  loved  us."  And  the  sharing  of 
God's  life,  the  eternal  life,  is  made,  thus, 
to  have  no  vagueness  in  Paul's  thought. 
It  means  just  these  particulars  upon  which 
he  has  been  dwelling.  This  it  is  to  live 
God's  own  life.  This  is  the  most  genuine 
and  complete  union  and  communion  with 
him.  Right  where  one  is,  with  these  peo- 
H  113: 


FRIENDSHIP 

pie  one  does  not  like,  that  seem  unattract- 
ive and  exasperating,  commonplace  and 
crude,  right  here  one  may  show  a  love 
characterized  by  these  qualities  named  by 
Paul,  and  so  live  the  life  of  God. 

This  is  Paul's  sketch  of  the  friendly  life. 
The  true  friend  will  be  long-suffering  and 
kind.  He  will  be  neither  envious,  nor 
boastful,  nor  conceited,  and  therefore  will 
not  behave  unbecomingly  in  even  life's 
closest  relations.  He  will  not  be  self-seek- 
ing, and  so  not  be  provoked,  nor  reckon  up 
his  wrongs.  And,  freed  thus  from  the 
selfish  and  partisan  spirit,  he  will  never 
rejoice  at  evil,  but  rejoice  rather  only  in 
the  triumph  of  Truth.  His  love  will  be 
proof  against  all  things,  always  trustful, 
always  hopeful,  always  patient.  A  friend- 
ship so  characterized  cannot  fail ;  and  there 
is  no  single  personal  relation,  into  which 
men  can  be  brought  one  to  the  other,  in 
which  these  qualities  would  not  conquer. 
Like  the  Beatitudes  of  Christ  himself,  this 
chapter  portrays  an  ideal  of  the  friendly 
life  to  which  he,  who  would  live  worthily, 
needs  often  to  come  back.  No  discussion 
of  friendship  can  afford  not  to  face  defi- 
nitely these  Christian  standards. 
114 


FRIENDSHIP'S  MOODS 


XVII.     THE  SELF-FORGETFUL 
MOOD 

I  have  elsewhere  expressed  my  convic- 
tion, on  psychological  grounds,  that  the 
two  greatest  means  in  true  living  are  work, 
in  which  one  can  express  his  best  self,  and 
personal  association  with  worthy  lives;  and 
that  the  two  greatest  corresponding  condi- 
tions in  the  fine  art  of  living  are  the  mood 
of  work, — the  objective  and  self-forgetful 
mood;  and  the  highest  condition  of  fine 
personal  relations, — reverence  for  person- 
ality. These  great  means  and  conditions 
seem  to  me  naturally,  therefore,  to  suggest 
the  fundamental  moods  and  fundamental 
ways  of  friendship.  And  they  find  cor- 
roboration  in  the  two  matchless  studies  of 
friendship  from  which  we  have  just  turned. 

For  the  Beatitudes  fall  naturally  into 
two  groups  of  four  each,  the  first  group 
personal,  the  second  social.  In  the  first 
group  it  is  perhaps  not  too  much  to  say 
that  the  central  quality  is  that  of  the  self- 
control  of  meekness,  which  involves  the 
qualities  of  the  Beatitudes  preceding,  and 
insures  that  of  the  fourth  Beatitude  im- 
mediately following.  And  true  self-control 
is  not  negative, — the  mere  holding  of 
oneself  back  in  restraint  from  the  evil,  but 

117 


FRIENDSHIP 

the  complete  mastery  of  one's  powers  for 
positive  achievement  in  good,  for  the  larg- 
est and  finest  expression  of  oneself  in 
action. 

In  the  second,  social,  group  the  central 
quality,  I  think,  may  be  said  to  be  that  of 
purity  of  heart,  in  the  sense  of  that  deep 
reverence  for  the  person  out  of  which  all 
true  inward  purity  grows.  For  this  deep 
sense  of  the  value  and  sacredness  of  the 
individual  person  as  a  child  of  God  will 
carry  with  it  mercy  and  peace-making  and 
self-sacrifice.  It  makes  possible,  that  is, 
the  highest  personal  associations. 

The  Beatitudes,  thus,  in  other  words, 
seem  to  me  to  group  about  these  two  main 
moods  of  the  loving  life, — the  self- forget- 
ful mood  and  the  mood  of  reverence  for 
the  person;  and  about  the  two  great  ways 
of  friendship, — the  way  of  expression  in 
action,  and  the  way  of  persistent  personal 
association. 

And  Paul's  sketch,  in  like  manner,  in 
its  opening  and  closing  emphasis  on  the 
long-suffering  quality  of  love,  builds  just 
as  unmistakably  on  the  sense  of  the  infinite 
value  and  sacredness  of  every  man  as  a 
child  of  God,  worthy,  therefore,  of  such 
118 


THE  SELF-FORGETFUL  MOOD 

love  as  Paul  describes.  And  the  descrip- 
tion makes  it  unmistakably  clear  that  the 
love  of  which  he  thinks  is  no  passive, 
merely  emotional,  state,  but  a  love  that  is 
prepared  to  express  itself  in  self-sacrificing 
action  to  the  very  end.  It  bears  up  against 
all  things ;  it  never  fails.  Here,  again,  are 
emphases  like  those  in  the  Beatitudes. 

We  have  some  right,  therefore,  to  hope 
that,  in  speaking  of  the  self-forgetful  mood 
and  of  reverence  for  the  person,  and  of 
the  ways  of  expression  and  personal  asso- 
ciation, we  shall  be  dealing  with  friend- 
ship's fundamental  and  all-inclusive  moods 
and  ways. 

And  first  of  all,  the  mood  of  friendship 
must  be  the  objective  and  self -forgetful 
mood.  It  may  seem  a  strange  requirement 
in  so  inner  a  matter  as  friendship  that  one 
should  insist  upon  the  objective  mood  as 
fundamental.  And  yet,  that  the  best  may 
result,  even  in  personal  relations,  one  must 
be  delivered  from  engrossing  self-conscious- 
ness. The  basis  of  friendship,  as  we  have 
seen,  implies  and  demands  such  objectivity. 
Just  because  an  established  friendship  is 
no  longer  on  probation,  just  because  true 
friends  trust  one  another  and  are  surren- 

119 


FRIENDSHIP 

dered  one  to  the  other,  they  need  not  be 
introspective,  either  concerning  themselves 
or  the  attitude  of  their  friend. 

And  the  mood  necessary  to  our  best 
work  and  best  achievement  means,  too,  the 
mood  necessary  to  that  best  self  that  we 
need  always  to  give  in  friendship.  No 
doubt  the  insistence  on  the  objective  mood 
is  not  to  be  pressed  to  the  extreme.  A 
wise  self-knowledge  is  always  important, 
and  should  continue  throughout.  Never- 
theless, the  true  friend  is  not  to  be  occupied 
with  himself  or  with  his  own  moods.  The 
introspective  habit,  in  this  sense,  is  a  real 
hindrance  in  the  life  either  with  men  or 
with  God.  For  love  is  certainly  self-for- 
getful, losing  itself  in  the  one  loved.  It 
desires  to  express  itself  in  active  service, 
and  so  loses  itself  in  its  work.  It  covets 
ability  to  bring  the  best  self,  and  so  must 
seek  achievement  of  the  highest  order,  that 
cannot  come  with  the  divided  mind. 

This  change  of  emphasis  from  the  intro- 
spective to  the  objective  mood  is  a  modern 
change,  justly  built  upon  psychology's  new 
insistence  upon  the  central  importance  of 
will  and  action,  and  contains  sure  promise 
of  fresh  achievement  in  both  the  moral 
120 


THE  SELF-FORGETFUL  MOOD 

and  religious  life,  in  the  development  of 
every  personal  relation.  For  no  friendship 
may  be  to  me  what  it  ought  to  be,  to  which 
I  do  not  bring  my  best  self.  And,  as  has 
just  been  indicated,  for  that  best  self,  this 
objective  mood  is  necessary.  I  shall  only 
bring  my  best  self,  not  by  thinking  too 
much  of  myself,  or  of  the  relations  in  which 
I  stand,  but  by  following  rather  the  call  of 
the  great  interests,  the  great  personalities, 
the  great  causes  and  motives,  and  respond- 
ing to  them.  As  Carlyle  says :  "How  were 
Friendship  possible?  In  mutual  devoted- 
ness  to  the  Good  and  True:  otherwise  im- 
possible, except  as  Armed  Neutrality,  or 
hollow  Commercial  League."  I  need  to  be 
able  to  lose  myself  in  the  greatness  of  the 
great  objective  interests  that  call  forth  my 
powers. 

For  the  best  help  of  my  friend,  too, 
whether  this  help  be  direct  or  indirect,  this 
self-forgetful  mood  is  not  less  necessary. 
Here,  surely,  I  need  leisure  from  myself. 
And  that  I  may  count  most  with  my  friend, 
he,  too,  needs  to  be  able  to  believe  that  I 
have  forgotten  myself.  Our  friendship 
will  grow,  and  the  value  of  it,  for  us  both, 
not  by  introspection,  but  unconsciously,  in 

121 


FRIENDSHIP 

our  union  in  great  interests,  in  our  common 
devotion  to  great  persons  and  great  causes. 

For  the  joy  of  the  personal  relation,  also, 
the  objective  mood  is  vital.  If  the  best 
love  and  best  work  are  those  naturally 
objective  and  ^self-forgetful,  then  surely 
the  joy  of  which  love  and  work  are  the  two 
great  sources,  needs  the  objective  mood. 
If  I  am  to  be  happy  myself,  and  to  make 
my  friend  happy,  I  must  not  be  engaged 
with  my  own  moods. 

And  this  insistence  upon  the  need  of  the 
objective,  self- forgetful  mood  in  human 
friendships,  holds  not  less  in  our  relation 
to  God,  in  spite  of  the  strong  trend  to  the 
contrary  which  is  to  be  found  in  much  re- 
ligious literature  and  practice,  especially  of 
a  generation  back. 

There  would  seem  to  be  the  strongest 
reasons  why  our  relation  to  God  should  be 
objective  rather  than  subjective  and  intro- 
spective. If  our  relation  to  him  is  real  at 
all,  a  relation  to  fact  and  not  one  of  our 
own  imagination,  it  is  plain  that  its  reality 
cannot  depend  simply  upon  any  striving  or 
straining  of  our  own,  but  must  be  largely 
God's  work,  and  our  own  plain  response  to 
his  revelation.  Our  chief  anxiety,  there- 
122 


THE  SELF-FORGETFUL  MOOD 

fore,  must  be  not  the  production  of  certain 
emotional  states  in  ourselves,  but  only  hon- 
est response  to  objective  fact.  It  is  not  our 
business  to  create  the  realities  of  the  spir- 
itual world,  but  simply  to  fulfil  those  plain 
conditions  upon  which  these  realities  may 
make  their  legitimate  impression.  The 
emotional  element  is  necessarily  variable, 
and  in  no  case  can  be  the  main  evidence  of 
assured  relation  to  God. 

As  to  the  presence  of  emotion  in  the 
religious  life,,  as  in  all  other  departments 
of  life,  there  are  great  differences  with  dif- 
ferent dispositions.  The  emotional  re- 
sponse, therefore,  in  the  relation  to  God 
will  necessarily  vary  with  different  persons. 
Our  very  constitutions,  too,  both  physical 
and  mental,  in  all  cases  forbid  the  possi- 
bility of  an  absolutely  unvarying  emotional 
state ;  and  the  attempt  to  secure  such  a  state 
by  constant  strain  can  result  only  in  ab- 
normality and  disaster.  No  situation  in 
life,  and  no  personal  relation,  can  stand 
constant  introspection.  The  reality  of  all 
values  best  verifies  itself  not  by  continuous 
inquiry  on  our  part  as  to  our  emotional 
response,  but  by  simply  and  objectively 
giving  these  great  values  opportunity  with 

123 


FRIENDSHIP 

us.  If  in  these  spheres  of  value  there  is 
reality  at  all,  it  will  vindicate  itself  upon 
opportunity;  it  is  our  part  simply  to  make 
sure  that  the  great  value  has  this  oppor- 
tunity. The  mood  of  health,  whether  phy- 
sical, mental  or  spiritual,  is  preeminently 
the  objective  mood,  not  the  subjective  or 
introspective  mood. 

It  is  not  only  true  that  our  first  introduc- 
tion to  some  great  sphere  of  value  usually 
comes  through  the  touch  of  some  other  life 
that  has  already  found  its  way  into  appre- 
ciation of  the  value;  but  also,  our  best 
growth  in  such  appreciation  often  comes 
through  the  sharing  of  another's  vision. 
Just  as  our  acquaintance  with  any  great 
man  may  be  deepened  through  seeing  what 
others  have  received  from  him,  so  our  ac- 
quaintance with  God  may  deepen  through 
others'  knowledge  of  him.  It  is  rare  that 
any  one  person  enters  into  complete  under- 
standing of  a  many-sided  nature;  different 
sides  of  a  great  personality  are  revealed  to 
different  persons.  To  know  the  home  life, 
the  table-talk,  the  letters,  the  intimate 
friends,  of  a  great  man,  even  though  one 
has  his  friendship  himself,  is  to  add  much 
to  the  significance  of  that  friendship.  A 
124 


THE  SELF-FORGETFUL  MOOD 

revelation  of  a  person  to  any  is  a  revelation 
in  some  measure  to  all;  and  it  would  be 
greatly  to  limit  our  vision  if  we  insisted  on 
confining  the  significance  of  any  personal 
relation  simply  to  that  which  we  ourselves 
have  discovered  at  first  hand.  We  shall 
be  greatly  helped  in  our  acquaintance  with 
God  by  knowing  the  friends  of  God. 
Much  of  the  best  that  God  has  for  us  of 
self-revelation  comes  thus  intermediately 
through  others'  lives.  No  friendship,  in- 
deed, has  yet  rendered  its  best  until  the 
friends  have  made  it  more  easy  for  each 
other  to  believe  in  God  and  the  spiritual 
world.  God  is  most  easily  incarnate  in 
human  souls,  and  the  deepest  secret  of 
many  a  life  must  be  found  in  the  simple 
answer  which  Charles  Kingsley  is  said  once 
to  have  made  to  Mrs.  Browning's  question, 
"What  is  the  secret  of  your  life?  Tell  me, 
that  I  may  make  mine  beautiful,  too."  He 
replied,  "I  had  a  friend.'* 

And  so  Martineau  can  say:  "If  we  can- 
not live  at  once  and  alone  with  Him,  we 
may  at  least  live  with  those  who  have  lived 
with  Him;  and  find,  in  our  admiring  love 
for  their  purity,  their  truth,  their  goodness, 
an  intercession  with  His  pity  on  our  behalf. 

125 


FRIENDSHIP 

To  study  the  lives,  to  meditate  the  sorrows, 
to  commune  with  the  thoughts,  of  the  great 
and  holy  men  and  women  of  this  rich 
world,  is  a  sacred  discipline,  which  deserves 
at  least  to  rank  as  the  forecourt  of  the 
temple  of  true  worship,  and  may  train  the 
tastes,  ere  we  pass  the  very  gate  of  heaven. 
.  .  .  We  forfeit  the  chief  source  of  dig- 
nity and  sweetness  in  life,  next  to  the  direct 
communion  with  God,  if  we  do  not  seek 
converse  with  the  greater  minds  that  have 
left  their  vestiges  on  the  world." 

All  this  is  in  exact  line  with  Paul's  idea 
of  the  Church  as  an  organic  body,  in  which 
each  member  needs  every  other;  and  it 
rightly  lays  emphasis  on  the  value  of  that 
fellowship  in  all  high  things  for  which  the 
Church  should  stand.  In  the  appreciation 
of  all  great  interests  and  great  personali- 
ties, we  need  constantly  the  correction  of 
others.  Our  own  view  is  necessarily  par- 
tial and  narrow.  We  need  that  greater 
breadth  and  greater  assurance  of  objective 
reality,  that  can  come  only  when  we  have 
supplemented  our  own  experience  by  that 
of  the  great  community  of  those  who  share 
in  the  same  life.  And  it  must  be  plain 
that  the  infinite  riches  of  the  infinite  God 
126 


THE  SELF-FORGETFUL  MOOD 

can  be  even  approximately  revealed  to  us 
only  so. 

And  it  is  just  at  this  point  that  the  Bible 
has  its  greatest  contribution  to  make  to  our 
life.  We  know  God  as  we  know  other 
persons, — by  what  he  does;  and  the  Bible 
is  the  supremest  record  the  world  contains 
of  God's  dealings  with  men.  We  are 
helped,  too,  in  our  own  life,  by  others' 
experiences,  and  the  Bible  is  such  an 
unmatched  record  of  men's  reaching  out 
after  God.  And  as  a  god-like  life  is  the 
divinest  proof  that  a  man  can  give  of  the 
being  of  a  God,  God  specially  speaks  to  us 
in  those  lives  that  have  sought  to  live  the 
god-like  life;  and  there  is  no  such  record 
of  these  lives  as  is  to  be  found  in  this  most 
personal  of  all  books.  The  men  who  write 
here,  too,  are  the  world's  great  seers.  We 
share  their  insights  and  aspire  in  their 
aspirations.  We  need  them  for  any  ade- 
quate view  of  God.  And,  as  we  tarry  in 
the  presence  of  these  great  and  varied  per- 
sonalities, with  their  many-sided  visions  of 
God,  God  can  actually  best  speak  to  us; 
far  more  than  in  our  own  unaided  medita- 
tion, is  there  here  opportunity  for  growth 
and  broadening.  And  all  these  possibili- 
ty 


FRIENDSHIP 

ties  reach  their  climax  in  the  supreme  con- 
crete presentment  of  God  in  Christ.  In 
him,  above  all,  may  we  know  God,  see  his 
spirit,  feel  his  love,  understand  his  char- 
acter, be  drawn  toward  him,  under  the 
spell  of  the  contagion  of  Christ's  life. 
Christ  becomes,  thus,  in  supreme  degree, 
the  way  to  God,  the  truth  of  God,  the  life 
of  God. 

The  objective  mood  is  the  normal  mood 
of  friendship,  whether  with  men  or  with 
God. 

It  is  only  in  the  light  of  such  considera- 
tions as  these  that  one  can  properly  measure 
the  place  of  the  emotional  element  in 
friendship.  And  yet,  many  will  be  inclined, 
doubtless,  to  urge  still  the  question,  Are 
not  our  human  friendships  chiefly  emo- 
tional? It  is  worth  while  to  look  the  facts 
squarely  in  the  face;  for,  in  insisting  upon 
the  fact  that  religion  may  be  best  conceived 
as  friendship  with  God,  one  does  not  wish 
simply  to  sentimentalize. 

It  is  doubtless  true  that  friendship  is  the 
chief  source  even  of  happiness ;  but  the  real 
amount  and  value  of  this  happiness  cannot 
be  measured  by  the  number  of  emotional 
thrills  experienced.  In  most  of  the  best 
128 


THE  SELF-FORGETFUL  MOOD 

and  most  influential  friendships  of  life,  I 
judge,  we  are  not  thinking  primarily  of 
feeling.  Feeling  is  allowed  to  take  care  of 
itself;  otherwise  it  is  likely  to  become  hys- 
terical, and  to  take  on  the  form  of  sham  or 
strained  emotion.  After  all,  the  greatest 
joy  of  friendship  is  joy  in  the  revelation  of 
personal  life,  and  in  the  deepening  mean- 
ing of  life  so  given.  In  Phillips  Brooks' 
words,  "There  is  as  yet  no  culture,  no 
method  of  progress  known  to  men,  that  is 
so  rich  and  complete  as  that  which  is  min- 
istered by  a  truly  great  friendship."  It  is 
a  great  education  to  live  with  a  soul  per- 
ennially fresh  and  absolutely  honest;  and 
no  mere  emotion  can  sum  up  the  signifi- 
cance of  such  a  friendship. 

When  one  thinks,  again,  of  the  necessary 
basis  of  a  friendship  worthy  the  name, — 
integrity,  breadth  and  depth  of  personality, 
deep  community  of  interests,  mutual  self- 
manifestation  and  answering  trust,  and 
mutual  self-giving,  he  cannot  forget  that 
in  all  these  there  is  much  more  than  feeling, 
though  feeling  is  naturally  involved.  If 
emotion  is  made  the  one  standard  and  aim, 
the  friendship  will  soon  go  to  pieces,  even 
in  the  most  intimate  possible  relations  of 
I  129 


FRIENDSHIP 

life.  If  the  friendship  is  to  be  an  endur- 
ing one,  there  must  come  to  be  a  deep, 
abiding  satisfaction  (with  likely  enough 
much  less  of  emotional  thrill),  that  never- 
theless brings  one  in  the  course  of  years  to 
feel  that  he  begins  to  see  what  love  is,  and 
makes  him  look  back  with  a  kind  of  pity 
upon  his  first  ideals  of  the  meaning  of 
friendship.  The  world  holds  few  things 
so  wonderful  as  the  wonder  of  the  growth 
of  a  genuine  love  between  two  souls,  deep- 
ening, broadening,  intertwining  all  their 
lives,  growing  quite  unconsciously,  and  in 

v  spite  of  full  recognition  of  all  limitations 
and  imperfections,  bringing  a  sense  of  the 
unity  of  the  lives,  of  the  necessity  of  one 

"'\o  the  other.  Such  friendships  are  per- 
haps the  fcest  proof  the  world  affords  of 
love  at  the  very  heart  of  the  universe.  In 
any  friendship  that  deserves  the  name,  the 
whole  man  must  be  revealed.  True  emo- 
tion, of  course,  will  come  here  and  there, 
unsought,  as  a  sort  of  natural  outgrowth, 
reflecting  the  unity  of  life  already  there; 
but  the  sham  emotion  that  must  be  manu- 
factured, and  concerning  which  one  must 
be  anxious,  is  only  an  enemy  of  friendship, 
neither  a  help  to  health  nor  a  sign  of  health. 
130 


THE  SELF-FORGETFUL  MOOD 

No,  even  our  human  friendships  are  not 
chiefly  emotional.  Joy  is  there,  deep,  abid- 
ing, and  growing;  but  it  is  there  not  chiefly 
as  a  reflection  of  itself,  but  as  the  out- 
growth of  a  relation  much  more  significant 
than  its  emotional  sign.  No  attempt  to 
measure  the  strength  of  our  emotions  can 
reveal  the  true  significance  of  any  genuine 
friendship.  In  like  manner,  no  emotional 
test  will  adequately  measure  what  the  reve- 
lation of  God  in  Christ  means  to  the 
thoughtful  man.  He  who  has  truly  built 
his  life  upon  the  foundation  of  that  reve- 
lation knows  that  all  the  springs  of  his  life  ; 
are  in  Christ;  and  he  will  best  understand 
what  Christ  really  means  to  him  not  by  the 
emotional  response  he  thinks  he  can  dis- 
cern, but  by  some  glimpse  of  the  barren- 
ness that  would  come  into  his  life  if  all  of 
thought  and  purpose  and  hope  and  aspira- 
tion that  have  gathered  about  Christ  were 
withdrawn. 

In  every  department  of  life,  thus,  the 
only  feeling  that  is  of  value  is  that  which 
comes  spontaneously,  which  is  not  manu- 
factured nor  strained  after.  We  may  re- 
joice rightly  in  the  uplift  of  such  emotion, 
but  it  is  not  an  experience  to  be  striven  after 


FRIENDSHIP 

for  its  own  sake.  Feeling  is,  after  all,  a 
symptom  and  a  sign  of  the  normal  life.  If 
joyful  emotion  is  abnormally  absent  in  the 
religious  life,  its  absence  should  lead  us  to 
•look  for  the  cause,  not  to  try  artificially  to 
work  up  the  feeling  itself,  which  can  result 
only  in  injury  and  self-deception.  The 
abnormal  absence  of  feeling  may  be  due 
to  bodily  conditions.  It  may  be  due  to  real 
failure  in  duty,  to  disobedience  to  known 
light.  It  may  be  due  most  of  all  simply 
to  failure  to  put  ourselves,  with  time  and 
thought,  in  the  presence  of  the  great  per- 
sonalities, and  the  great  truths.  One  does 
not  want  the  symptoms  of  health,  but 
health;  and  with  health,  the  symptoms  of 
health  will  come.  The  only  way,  there- 
fore, to  right  feeling  in  the  religious  life, 
is  through  right  conduct  and  right  think- 
ing. The  control  of  feeling  is  not  directly 
'within  our  power;  we  train  feeling  by 
obedience  and  by  putting  ourselves  in  the 
presence  of  the  great  .objects  that  natu- 
rally call  out  feeling.  The  great  sources, 
therefore,  of  our  religious  life,  with  its 
appropriate  emotional  response,  are  not 
introspective  exercises,  but  sharing  in  the 
insights  and  experiences  and  truth  of  others, 


THE  SELF-FORGETFUL  MOOD 

putting  ourselves  in  the  presence  of  the 
great  objective  forces  that  make  for  char- 
acter and  the  spiritual  life,  entering  into 
large  and  comprehensive  views  of  the  Bible 
as  the  greatest  spiritual  record  of  the  race; 
above  all,  living  in  the  presence  of  the  su- 
preme self-revelation  of  God  in  Christ  with 
honest  response  to  his  spirit.  By  this 
objective  route  life  will  grow,  and  feeling 
will  come  therewith  so  far  as  it  needs  to 
come. 


133 


XVIII.     REVERENCE    FOR   THE 
PERSON 

The  highest  condition  of  fine  personal 
relations,  and  therefore  the  most  essential 
condition  for  every  friendship  worthy  the 
name,  is  a  deep  sense  of  the  value  and 
sacrednfss  of  the  individual  person,  one's 
own  and  that  of  his  friends. 

A  high  friendship  requires,  first  of  all, 
self-respect,  which  is  not  conceit  nor  any 
lack  of  true  humility;  for  humility  means 
no  underestimate  of  oneself  or  contempt 
for  oneself,  but  the  grateful  recognition  of 
the  indispensable  value  and  message  of  the 
other,  along  with  one's  own  value  and  mes- 
sage. It  is  not  only  no  virtue,  but  may  be 
a  great  source  of  weakness  and  failure  that 
one  should  think  too  meanly  of  himself. 
Character,  influence,  and  happiness,  alike, 
all  require  a  fundamental  respect  for  one- 
self. How  much  seems  to  you  to  foe  due 
to  you?  How  great  a  claim  do  you  your- 
self make  on  life?  How  thoroughly  are 
you  persuaded  that  you  are  called  to  an 
"imperishable  work  in  the  world"  ?  These 
are  the  questions  that  determine  in  large 
measure  one's  own  attainment,  his  ability 
to  help  others,  and  his  joy  in  living. 

For  the  only  measure  that  we  have  for 
134 


the  significance  of  the  life  of  others  is  the 
thought  of  the  significance  of  our  own  self. 
The  Golden  Rule  grows  in  breadth  and 
depth  of  application  according  to  the  mean- 
ing that  we  put  into  the  phrase  "Whatso- 
ever ye  would  that  men  should  do  unto 
you."  The  sense  of  your  obligation  to 
others,  that  is,  will  depend  directly  upon 
your  sense  of  the  claim  that  you  yourself 
may  rightly  make  upon  life.  How  great 
are  you?  How  much  must  life  bring  you, 
if  you  are  to  feel  that  your  deepest  needs 
are  satisfied? 

No  bare  altruism,  therefore,  can  suffice. 
Every  deepening  of  the  sense  of  the  signifi- 
cance of  oneself  is  a  deepening  at  the  same 
time  of  thfc  sense  of  the  significance  of 
others,  also.  Every  lowering  of  your  own 
claim  upon  life  is  a  lowering  at  the  same 
time  of  your  recognition  of  the  claim  of 
others  upon  you.  A  man  must  therefore 
be  true  to  himself,  to  his  own  individuality, 
to  his  peculiar  contribution,  to  the  sense  of 
his  own  calling,  if  he  is  to  be  at  all  what  he 
ought  to  be  to  others.  As  one  of  our  Ger- 
man philosophers  has  naively  suggested, 
if  two  of  us  are  exactly  alike,  one  of  us 
can  be  spared.  For  one's  own  character, 

135 


FRIENDSHIP 

therefore,  one  must  vehemently  resist  all 
those  tendencies,  from  whatever  source, 
that  tend  to  draw  him  down  from  funda- 
mental self-respect. 

"The  hands  that  love  us  often  are  the  hands 
That  softly  close  our  eyes  and  draw  us  earth-ward. 
We  give  them  all  the  largess  of  our  life— 
Not  this,  not  all  the  world,  contenteth  them, 
Till  we  renounce  our  rights  as  living  souls." 

And,  as  Black  says,  "we  cannot  renounce 
our  rights  as  living  souls  without  losing 
our  souls."  In  the  ranks  of  one's  professed 
friends,  it  is  not  impossible  that  one  should 
find,  in  some  one's  deft  phrase,  "exploiters 
of  souls;"  and  one  may  not  allow  his  life 
and  personality  simply  to  be  exploited  by 
another.  He  has  a  quality,  a  value,  a  mes-  \ 
sage,  and  a  mission,  that  are  solely,  indi- 
vidually his  own,  and  for  these  he  must 
stand;  from  the  realization  of  these  he  can- 
not be  excused;  and  he  must  resist  even  the 
hands  that  love  him  if  they  would  draw 
him  away  from  his  real  self.  There  is  no 
sin  against  friendship  so  grave  as  that 
which  allows  irreverent  associations  to  take 
the  place  of  the  best.  For  one's  own  soul's 
sake,  therefore,  one  must  have  self-rever- 

136 


REVERENCE  FOR  THE  PERSON 

ence,  reverence  for  the  self  that  God  meant 
him  to  be. 

And  if  one  is  to  have  much  to  give  in 
any  personal  relation,  he  needs  to  remem- 
ber, once  again,  that  ultimately  he  has  only 
himself  to  give.  If  he  does  not  value  that 
individual  self,  but  falls  into  mere  imita- 
tion, he  has  practically  no  gift  to  make. 
The  great  discovery  of  life  is  the  finding 
of  oneself,  the  discovery  of  that  message 
that  one  can  believe  has  been  given  to  him 
to  stand  for.  That  which  men  need  from 
us  is  not  the  echo  of  some  other,  but  the 
net  result  of  our  own  experience,  that 
which  means  something  to  us,  which  we 
can  say  with  conviction,  and  speak  out  with 
joy.  The  larger,  therefore,  our  own  claim 
on  life,  the  larger  must  be  the  self  that  we 
have  to  give  in  friendship.  My  friend 
needs,  quite  as  much  as  I,  that  I  should  j 
have  true  self-reverence. 

Moreover,  it  is  impossible  that  that  deep 
revelation  of  one's  self  which  is  essential 
to  intimate  friendship  should  ever  be  made 
where  the  spirit  of  the  other  is  essentially 
profane  and  blasphemous.  He,  who  can 
consent  to  tattle  as  an  idle  tale  that  sacred 
bit  of  your  life  which  you  have  opened  up 

137 


FRIENDSHIP 

to  him  in  the  hope  of  giving  help  at  a  time 
of  mortal  peril,  can  never  be  your  friend. 
From  such  you  must  shut  yourself.  You 
have  no  other  recourse.  You  have  cast 
your  pearls  before  swine  and  they  have 
trampled  them  under  their  feet  and  turned 
again  to  rend  you. 

And  the  joy  of  living,  too,  that  I  may 
bring  into  friendship,  requires  this  funda- 
mental self-respect.  Nothing  can  give  such 
meaning  to  life  as  to  know  that  one  has  a 
part,  a  real  part,  his  own  unique  part,  the 
part  of  a  son  of  God,  to  play  in  life,  that 
he  has  his  own  individual  flavor  that  no 
other  soul  can  exactly  reproduce.  He  has 
the  joy  of  a  divine  calling,  of  a  divinely 
given  individuality,  and  the  joy  of  giving 
this  in  those  personal  relations  in  which  he 
is  placed. 

That  reverence  for  the  person  that  is  the 
highest  condition  of  fine  personal  relations 
requires  first  of  all,  then,  self-reverence. 

And  no  friendship  may  yield  its  best 
without  a  corresponding  reverence  for 
others,  for  both  their  liberty  and  their  per- 
sonality. For  respect  for  the  liberty  of  the 
other  is  essential  if  one  is  not  himself  to 
become  a  slave,  as  Fichte  long  ago  pointed 
138 


REVERENCE  FOR  THE  PERSON 

out.  Character  inevitably  deteriorates 
where  one  has  the  petty  desire  to  play 
tyrant,  to  show  his  own  power.  Few  men 
can  stand  the  test  of  irresponsible  power, 
though  probably  all  men  desire  such  power. 
But  the  peril  of  it  is  to  be  resisted  for  one's 
life's  sake.  For  no  man  may  lord  it  over 
another,  and  himself  remain  true  man. 

Nor  is  It  possible  to  win  your  friend  to 
his  own  best  while  you  take  this  dominat- 
ing attitude  toward  him.  Neither  child 
nor  adult  can  come  to  character  where  there 
is  no  chance  for  choice.  There  is  no  moral 
victory  through  a  simple  conflict  of  wills 
and  the  final  compelled  subjection  of  one 
to  the  other.  There  is  character  only 
where  the  right  purpose  is  taken  on  will- 
ingly and  gladly.  Every  relation  of  the 
family,  as  every  relation  in  the  more  pub- 
lic life,  suffers  where  a  man  forgets  his 
respect  for  the  liberty  of  the  other.  You 
may  not,  therefore,  choose  for  your  friend 
in  any  relation  of  life.  You  may  not  lay 
your  will  in  insistent  dominance  upon  his 
will.  You  may  not  even  save  him,  in  spite 
of  himself,  from  his  own  blunders.  For 
you  can  save  him  from  no  wrong  so  deep 
as  the  wrong  of  violating  essentially  the 

139 


FRIENDSHIP 

center  of  his  own  being.  Even  in  the  case 
of  a  child,  there  are  plain  limits  within 
which  your  choices  for  him  must  be  made. 

And  happiness  requires  that  a  man 
should  have  a  sphere  of  action  of  his  own, 
a  chance  for  decision  and  choice.  And  no 
elaborate  devices  for  making  others  happy 
can  furnish  any  substitute  for  the  simple 
willingness  to  allow  them  room  for  their 
own  choices,  for  their  own  self-expression. 
Joy  in  friendship  requires  this  abundant 
room  for  the  liberty  and  the  individuality 
of  your  friend.  It  is  impossible  that  he 
should  give  you  what  it  is  in  him  to  give, 
while  you  seek  to  dominate  his  will.  Even 
capacity  for  work  decreases  where  there  is 
no  joy  in  the  work,  and  joy  in  work  re- 
quires freedom. 

And  respect  for  my  friend  means,  even 
more  than  respect  for  his  liberty,  a  rev- 
erence for  his  personality,  the  sense  of  his 
sacredness  and  inestimable  value,  that  he 
is  a  child  of  God,  with  an  inner  holy  of 
holies  into  which  no  one,  not  even  the 
parent,  may  force  his  way.  To  fail  here 
in  our  personal  relations  is  to  fail  at  the 
center.  The  highest  test  of  a  man  or  of  a 
civilization  is  the  measure  of  respect  for 
140 


REVERENCE  FOR  THE  PERSON 

the  person.  For  our  own  sake,  therefore, 
even  in  the  most  intimate  relations  of  life, 
we  must  not  override  the  personality  of 
others.  We  force  no  doors  in  friendship, 
but,  like  the  Christ  in  Revelation,  we  stand 
reverently  at  the  door  without,  to  knock. 
And  only  if  the  door  be  opened  from  with- 
in, may  we  come  in  to  sup  with  our  friend 
and  he  with  us.  There  are  those  who 
count  that  a  measure  of  the  intimacy  of 
their  friendships  which  is  rather  a  measure 
of  the  degree  in  which  they  have  degraded 
them;  for  the  highest  friendship  preserves, 
always,  this  deep  sense  of  reverence. 

And  as  certainly  as  one  cannot  come  to 
his  own  best  without  this  sense  of  the  value 
and  sacredness  of  the  person,  so  certainly 
is  it  impossible  for  him  to  bring  to  another 
what  he  ought  without  this  same  reverence. 
Far  beyond  the  influence  of  the  words  we 
speak,  is  the  influence  of  the  spirit  that 
quite  unconsciously  we  manifest.  Even  the 
very  meaning  of  influence  changes  for  one 
who  has  entered  into  the  significance  of  this 
highest  requirement  of  friendship — the 
reverence  for  the  personality  of  one's 
friends.  For  to  influence  another  is  not  to 
dominate  him;  that  is  only  tyranny,  only 

141 


FRIENDSHIP 

the  putting  him  in  bondage.  The  only  in- 
fluence that  the  man  of  high  ideals  may 
covet  is  the  influence  that  leads  another, 
not  to  act  under  the  mere  impelling  force 
of  his  personality,  but  that  draws  him  to 
choose  for  himself  what  in  his  own  highest 
moments  he  knows  he  ought  to  choose.  It 
is  a  gross  betrayal  of  trust  when  the" older 
and  wiser  man,  from  his  vantage  ground 
of  trusted  authority,  imposes  his  will  upon 
another,  or  leads  him  to  action  which  he 
will  vainly  regret  when  the  spell  of  the 
superior  presence  is  removed.  It  is  poor 
business  for  any  true  man  to  be  making 
disciples  in  the  sense  of  securing  a  body  of 
followers  who  are  content  passively  to  imi- 
tate and  to  echo  him,  instead  of  helping 
them  to  come  to  the  realization  of  their 
own  true  selves.  The  naturally  strong 
willed  have  grave  need  constantly  to  guard 
against  the  sin  of  tyranny,  of  overriding, 
for  their  own  pleasure  or  success,  the  per- 
sonalities of  those  gathered  about  them. 
In  the  very  name  of  affection  the  greatest 
injuries  are  sometimes  so  wrought.  There 
are  fathers  and  mothers,  husbands  and 
wives,  and  friends  of  every  degree,  who 
are  not  willing  that  those  about  them  should 
142 


REVERENCE  FOR  THE  PERSON 

have  the  opportunity  to  live  out  their  own 
lives. 

It  is  not  less  true  that  there  is  no  condi- 
tion of  happiness  in  friendship  so  great  as 
this  same  reverence  for  the  person  as  such. 
The  heedless  insistence  that  people  shall  be 
happy  in  the  way  in  which  you  please,  and 
not  in  their  own  way,  may  not  always  pro- 
voke rebellion,  but  it  makes  genuine  happi- 
ness impossible.  There  are  some  appar- 
ently smooth-running  households  that  are 
smooth-running,  not  because  the  relations 
are  what  they  ought  to  be,  but  simply  be- 
cause five  people  in  the  home  have  decided 
that  the  only  way  to  have  peace  is  to  allow 
the  sixth  to  have  his  own  way.  And  this 
sixth  person  may  very  likely  think  of  him- 
self as  peculiarly  devoted  to  the  happiness 
of  the  other  inmates  of  the  house.  But 
his  stPxidpoint  is  that  he  knows  far  better 
thaii  any  of  them  what  is  good  for  them, 
and  they  shall  have  what  he  thinks  is  good 
for  them,  whether  they  like  it  or  not.  He 
is  able,  thus,  with  good  conscience,  to  main- 
tain his  intolerant  self-will,  and  at  the  same 
time  to  seem  to  himself  devoted  to  the  hap- 
piness of  his  household.  These  benevolent 
tyrants,  who  have  a  fully  developed  plan 

143 


FRIENDSHIP 

for  every  soul  they  meet,  and  are  even 
ready  to  go  to  considerable  lengths  of  self- 
sacrifice  of  a  sort,  if  they  may  only  be  al- 
lowed to  carry  out  their  own  plan,  may 
well  be  reminded  of  those  suggestive  words 
of  Charlotte  Yonge,  that  none  of  us  are 
likely  to  take  too  deeply  to  heart,  "It  is  a 
great  thing  to  sacrifice;  it  is  a  greater  to 
consent  not  to  sacrifice  in  one's  own  way." 
Nor  is  it  true,  as  seems  often  so  care- 
lessly and  disastrously  assumed,  that  the 
reverent  spirit  is  needed  at  the  beginning 
of  our  friendships,  but  may  easily  be  dis- 
carded later.  I  suppose  the  world  knows 
nowhere  such  blasphemous  desecrations  as 
sometimes  take  place  within  the  limits  of 
a  close  personal  relation,  where  perchance 
to  the  eye  of  a  possible  observer  no  law, 
human  or  divine,  would  seem  to  have  been 
violated,  and  where  the  violator  himself, 
in  his  insolent  assurance  that  his  will  must 
be  necessarily  the  best  for  all  concerned, 
might  even  pride  himself  on  the  justness 
and  integrity  of  his  purposes.  The  inner 
cruelties  of  conscious  rectitude  seem  to  me 
sometimes  to  be  even  more  full  of  anguish 
than  the  wrongs  wrought  by  the  merely 
brutal;  for  it  is  only  those  who  have  gone 
144 


REVERENCE  FOR  THE  PERSON 

some  distance  in  the  road  toward  friend- 
ship to  whom  are  exposed  the  highest  sanc- 
tities of  life.  I  think  it  is  hardly  possible 
for  one  to  cultivate,  in  this  matter,  too  deli- 
cate and  sensitive  a  conscience.  Certainly 
the  best  in  friendship  can  come  only  to  the 
reverent. 

For  that  best  self  that  I  would  bring  to 
my  friendship,  for  that  best  service  for  my 
friend  that  I  would  render,  for  the  joy  in 
friendship  that  I  would  feel  and  help  him 
to  know,  there  is  no  condition,  then,  so 
deep-going  as  this  of  reverence  for  the  per- 
son, one's  own  and  that  of  the  other. 

And  that  reverence  cannot  be  partial. 
The  spirit  that  is  required  in  any  friendship 
is  the  spirit  of  reverence  for  the  person  as 
such,  and  one  may  not  confine  its  true 
manifestation  to  a  single  relation,  or  to  a 
single  person.  He  cannot  show  it  at  its 
best  anywhere,  unless  he  feel  it  every- 
where. We  vainly  cheat  ourselves  when 
we  dream  that  we  can  be,  even  in  our  best 
friendship,  all  we  ought,  while  in  any  other 
relation  we  still  cherish  the  spirit  of  selfish 
contempt. 

And  it  is  this  fact  of  the  unity  of  our 
J 


FRIENDSHIP 

spiritual  lives,  and  of  the  deep-going  nature 
of  this  spirit  of  reverence  for  the  person, 
that  makes  it  so  certain  to  Christ  that  there 
is  no  surer  road  to  the  vision  and  the  ac- 
quaintance of  God  himself.  It  is  the  pure 
in  heart  to  whom  it  is  promised  that  they 
shall  "see  God."  The  highest  manifesta- 
tion of  the  loving  life  is  to  be  found  in  this 
spirit  of  reverence,  and  at  no  point  in  char- 
acter does  one  so  surely  share  in  the  very 
life  of  God.  And  if  this  deep  persistent 
spirit  of  reverence  is  needed  in  all  our 
human  relations,  much  more  must  it  be 
demanded  in  this  relation  to  God.  The 
completest  personal  self-revelation,  whether 
of  men  or  of  God,  can  be  made  only  to  the 
reverent.  We  all  need  to  lay  to  heart 
Herrmann's  words :  "There  can  be  no  com- 
munion with  God  without  awe  under  the 
sense  of  the  holy  power  of  goodness;  when 
that  awe  ceases,  communion  with  God 
ceases  also."1  The  very  atmosphere  of  the 
life  of  the  disciple  of  Christ  is  reverence, 
his  first  petition  to  the  Father  in  Heaven, 
"Hallowed  be  thy  name." 

For  friendship,  human  and  divine,  rev- 
erence is  a  supreme  condition. 

1  Communion  viith  God,  p.  272. 
146 


FRIENDSHIP'S  WAYS 


XIX.    EXPRESSION 

Emerson  says  somewhere  that  there  is 
more  love  than  is  expressed;  and  one  cer- 
tainly hopes  that  he  may  be  right.  For  it 
seems  clear  enough  that  there  is  no  such 
expression  of  love  as  there  ought  to  be; 
that  in  very  many  of  even  the  fairly  close 
relations  of  life  there  is  great  lack  of  ex- 
pressed appreciation,  all  too  little  recogni- 
tion of  service  done,  and  much  needless 
heart-hunger.  And  yet  friendship  cannot 
ignore  the  fundamental  psychological  law 
that  no  desire,  feeling  or  aspiration,  no 
thought  of  any  kind,  is  fully  ours  until  we 
have  expressed  it,  and  is  the  more  com- 
pletely ours  the  more  perfect  the  expres- 
sion. From  this  law  friendship  cannot  be 
absolved,  and  the  results  of  disobedience 
to  the  law  will  register  themselves  inevit- 
ably in  the  greater  poverty  of  the  personal 
relation. 

What  is  the  expression  needed  if  a  true 
friendship  is  to  grow  as  it  ought  ?  Perhaps 
it  might  well  be  summed  up  in  simply  say- 
ing that  if  a  friendship  is  to  deepen,  the 
friends  must  simply  and  steadily  fulfil  the 
conditions  that  make  this  deepening  pos- 
sible. And  as  one  thinks  of  the  basis  that 
we  have  seen  must  be  laid  for  any  worthy 

149 


FRIENDSHIP 

friendship,  he  cannot  help  seeing  that  the 
deepening  of  the  friendship  must  mean  that 
the  friends  do  not  forget  that  on  each  side 
integrity,  breadth,  and  depth  of  personal- 
ity are  to  be  preserved ;  that  they  are  to  go 
forward  into  a  still  completer  community 
of  interest;  that  there  must  be  increasing 
self-revelation  and  its  natural  growing  re- 
sponse in  trust;  and  that  in  their  mutual 
self-giving  there  must  be  an  enlarging  gift. 
One  is  not  fulfilling  the  conditions  for  a 
deepening  and  enriching  friendship  where 
these  requisites  to  significant  personal  rela- 
tions are  ignored;  and  the  kind  of  expres- 
sion, first  of  all,  for  which  the  deepening 
friendship  calls,  is,  then,  this  steady,  per- 
sistent fulfilling  of  fundamental  conditions. 
It  may  also  be  said,  that  the  expression 
called  for  in  a  true  friendship  only  corre- 
sponds to  that  positive  self-control,  for 
which  we  found  that  both  the  psychological 
and  Christian  standards  called.  For  that 
basic  self-control  does  not  merely  ask  that 
in  a  friendship  the  friends  should  simply 
keep  themselves  from  bad  things,  but  it 
asks  rather  for  that  maintenance  of  them- 
selves at  their  best  that  sets  them  naturally 
forward  in  union  in  high  purpose  and  in 
150 


EXPRESSION 

great  and  worthy  enterprise.  Those  who 
would  be  true  friends  can  least  of  all  allow 
themselves  to  forget  the  truth  so  nobly 
phrased  by  Beecher:  "Men  are  free  in  pro- 
portion to  the  number  of  spheres  of  obedi- 
ence that  they  can  fill.  Laws  are  not 
shackles  to  impede,  but  tools  and  harnesses 
to  assist  human  force.  The  peculiarity  of 
our  early  ancestry  was  not  that  they  loved 
liberty;  everything  in  heaven,  on  earth  and 
in  the  sea  does  that;  but  they  discerned  the 
royal  thought,  which  others  had  missed 
who  threw  off  law  to  find  liberty,  that  by 
taking  on  law  men  are  made  free.  Obedi- 
ence to  God's  law  is  the  highest  liberty  to 
which  humanity  may  ever  reach."  That 
maintenance  of  oneself  at  his  best  even 
under  provocation,  that  having  one's  pow- 
ers fully  in  hand  for  great  achievement, 
that  meekness  of  positive  self-control,  de- 
mands, then,  for  its  realization  in  friend- 
ship, expression, — expression  of  one's  best 
self  in  one's  best  work. 

And  the  objective  mood,  too,  which  we 
have  found  to  be  in  preeminent  degree  the 
requisite  mood  for  friendship,  looks  to  such 
outward  expression  of  the  friendly  life. 
However  intimate  a  friendship  may  be, 


FRIENDSHIP 

the  friends  may  not  forget  that  they  do 
not  exist  simply  for  each  other,  that  they 
have  ideals  to  which  they  must  be  true, 
and  worthy  work  to  do;  and  those  ideals 
they  must  objectively  realize,  and  that  wor- 
thy work  they  must  do,  or  else  be  less 
worthy  of  each  other. 

The  law  of  expression,  thus,  in  any  per- 
sonal relation,  means  much  more  than  that 
one  should  simply  tell  his  love,  say  what 
the  relation  means.  Adequate  expression, 
even  in  such  word,  is  important  and 
needed,  and  all  too  rare.  But  the  law  goes 
beyond  this,  as  we  have  seen.  For  one  is 
not  really  expressing  his  love  in  a  worthy 
friendship  if  he  is  not  putting,  in  every 
way,  his  best  self  into  that  friendship,  and 
that  must  mean  that  he  is  seeking  such 
service  and  work  as  will  enable  him  to 
express  his  best  self.  For  the  need  of 
expression  in  this  deepest  sense  in  any 
friendship  may  be  seen  in  this, — that  a 
friend  must  wish  to  give  the  largest  pos- 
sible service  that  one  soul  can  do  for 
another.  And  there  seem  to  be  just  two 
services  of  prime  significance  that  can  be 
so  rendered:  one  may  be,  first  of  all,  the 
man  he  ought  to  be,  and  lay  daily  the  un- 
152 


conscious  impress  of  a  high  and  noble 
character  upon  his  friend;  and  he  may 
share  with  his  friend  his  own  best  vision, 
the  vision  of  those  ideals  and  motives  and 
personalities  by  which  he  himself  most  of 
all  lives.  Beyond  these  two  services,  there 
is  nothing  of  prime  significance  that  one 
man  may  do  for  another.  But  it  is  impos- 
sible to  render  either  of  these  services 
without  expression,  in  high  activity.  Speech 
has  its  place,  no  doubt,  in  both,  and  an 
important  place;  but  the  expression  in  ac- 
tion speaks  louder  than  any  words  can 
speak,  and  the  true  friend  may  not  fail  in 
this  expression. 

But  one  may  not  leave  the  discussion 
of  friendship's  way  of  expression,  without 
remembering  in  particular  that  the  love 
itself,  to  which  the  friendship  bears  wit- 
ness, needs  manifestation  in  many  common 
ways.  Many  friendships,  many  homes, 
many  other  more  or  less  intimate  relations 
of  life,  suffer  from  undue  repression;  and 
one  needs  to  be  reminded  that  love  needs 
expression  in  word,  in  care  to  please  in 
little  matters,  in  spoken  gratitude,  in  the 
willingness  mutually  to  share  burdens,  in 
glad  sacrifice  one  for  the  other.  We  cheat 

153 


FRIENDSHIP 

ourselves  in  our  friendships,  when  any  of 
these  modes  of  expression  are  wanting. 
And  of  these  varied  expressions  of  friend- 
ship, none  perhaps  deserves  greater  em- 
phasis than  the  possibilities  of  expression, 
or  failure  in  expression,  in  small  matters. 
In  the  words  of  another,  "When  we  look 
back  on  this  life  from  the  heights  of  the 
heavenly  world,  we  shall  doubtless  marvel 
that  the  dearest  friends,  who  would  have 
died  for  one  another  if  need  be,  could  con- 
sent to  give  each  other  so  much  pain  with 
little  unkindnesses.  How  strange  it  will 
seem  then  that  we  were  so  exacting  in  mat- 
ters so  unimportant;  that  we  were  so  care- 
less of  the  sensitive  places  in  a  fond  heart 
and  touched  them  so  roughly ;  that  we  were 
so  ready  to  answer  an  impatient  word  with 
a  more  impatient  one;  that  we  were  so 
forgetful  of  the  little  ministries  of  love  that 
are  worth  so  much  more  when  unsolicited." 

As  I  have  elsewhere  pointed  out,1  there 
is  no  one  of  these  simple  and  common 
things  that  has  not  a  large  service  to  render 
in  making  more  real,  more  strong,  and 
more  tender  our  relation  to  God,  as  well 
as  to  men. 

1  Letters  to  Sunday  School  Teachers,  pp.  in  ff. 
154 


XX.    PERSONAL  ASSOCIATION 

One  has  not  reached  the  heart  of  friend- 
ship until  he  recognizes  that,  after  all  has 
been  said,  its  one  great  means  is  personal 
association.  It  sometimes  seems  as  if  the 
single,  all-inclusive  counsel  that  one  need 
ever  care  to  give  to  another  might  be 
summed  up  in  the  sentence,  Stay  persistently 
in  the  presence  of  the  best  in  the  sphere  In 
which  you  seek  attainment.  All  the  rest 
will  take  care  of  itself.  Hear  persistently 
the  best  in  music.  See  persistently  the  best 
in  art.  Read  persistently  the  best  in  litera- 
ture. Stay  persistently  in  the  presence  of 
the  best  in  character.  Results  must  follow 
such  association  with  the  best.  Disciple- 
ship  in  this  sense  is  of  the  very  essence  of 
growth  in  life.  And  the  law  holds  pre- 
eminently for  attainment  in  real  living,  for 
achievement  In  character  and  influence  and 
happiness.  The  world  knows  no  means  so 
powerful  and  persuasive,  no  road  so  cer- 
tain, into  any  of  the  higher  achievements  of 
life,  as  this  way  of  personal  association. 

And  he  who  would  grow  into  larger  and 
richer  friendships  must  recognize  first  of 
all  that,  if  his  friend  is  in  truth  worthy  of 
such  a  friendship  as  he  seeks,  the  great  way 
is  by  personal  association.  One  cannot 

155 


FRIENDSHIP 

grab  up  and  hurry  off  with  the  fine  fruits 
of  friendship.  No  friendship  that  counts 
for  much  with  either  men  or  God  can  be- 
come one's  own  without  the  giving  of 
time,  of  thought,  of  attention,  of  honest 
response.  In  Emerson's  words :  "The  laws 
of  friendship  are  austere  and  eternal,  of 
one  web  with  the  laws  of  nature  and  of 
morals.  But  we  have  aimed  at  a  swift  and 
petty  benefit,  to  suck  a  sudden  sweetness. 
We  snatch  at  the  slowest  fruit  in  the  whole 
garden  of  God,  which  many  summers  and 
many  winters  must  ripen."  No  friendship 
is  so  high,  so  fine,  or  so  assured  that  it  does 
not  need  that  the  friends  should  take  time 
to  be  together,  that  they  should  be  willing 
to  think  enough  to  enter  with  some  appre- 
ciation into  the  thought  and  experience  of 
each  other,  and  that  they  should  make 
honest  response  to  the  best  in  each  other's 
character  and  in  each  other's  vision. 

And  neither  in  our  human  relations,  nor 
in  our  relations  to  God,  can  we  safely  for- 
get the  special  value  of  occasional  longer 
times  together.  It  is  very  easy,  after  all, 
to  fall  into  ruts  even  in  what  we  think  our 
best  friendships,  and  in  our  most  intimate 
home  relations.  We  keep  putting  off  the 

156 


PERSONAL  ASSOCIATION 

time  for  a  fuller  understanding,  for  a  more 
intelligent  sympathy,  and,  even  if  with  some 
misgiving,  we  allow  ourselves  to  stay  on 
the  surface  of  each  other's  lives.  We  can 
make  no  sudden  dive  into  the  depths  of 
another  life.  It  takes  time  and  thought, 
the  leisure  of  that  occasional  longer  time 
that  friendship  greatly  needs.  It  seems 
possible  that  two  lives  may  be,  as  it  were, 
welded  by  the  impact  of  a  common  daily 
environment  into  a  kind  of  unity  that  is 
not  to  be  underestimated;  but  one  may 
doubt  whether  the  deeper,  tenderer  inter- 
penetration  of  lives  can  so  come.  It  seems 
a  small  thing  that  the  husband  and  wife, 
the  father  and  son,  the  two  friends  and 
companions  in  work  should  have  the  two 
or  three  weeks  practically  alone,  shut  up  to 
each  other;  and  yet,  great  results  in  enrich- 
ment of  life  may  turn  on  so  small  a  cause. 
The  daily  few  minutes  in  the  presence  of 
the  thought  and  life  of  Christ  have  very 
much  to  give  to  any  life;  but  the  occasional 
hours  may  bring  a  vision  of  the  meaning 
of  Christ  that  no  few  minutes  can  ever 
give.  ^ 

It  is  this  law  of  personal  association, 
then,  that  shows  at  once  how  great  may  be 

157 


FRIENDSHIP 

the  significance  in  the  relation  to  God  of 
the  daily  use  of  the  Bible  and  of  prayer. 
They  are  no  magical  means  for  getting 
mysterious  results.  If  this  law  of  personal 
association  holds  at  all  in  our  relation  to 
God,  they  stand  among  the  most  natural 
of  all  means  for  growth  into  the  divine 
friendship.  It  is  plain  good  sense  so  to 
recognize  them. 

But  it  should  be  still  more  plainly  said 
that  the  personal  association  for  which 
friendship,  human  or  divine,  calls,  is  no 
mere  passive  being  together,  but  involves 
rather,  if  it  is  ever  to  come  to  its  best, 
active  sharing  in  the  riches  of  one  anoth- 
er's lives,  sharing  in  great  experiences, 
sharing  in  dominant  interests,  sharing  in 
service  of  great  causes,  sharing  in  sacrifices 
for  great  common  ends,  sharing  in  great 
common  personal  loyalties  and  friendships. 

And  it  needs  hardly  to  be  pointed  out 
that  this  needed  community  of  life  is  even 
more  requisite  in  our  relation  to  God  than 
in  our  relation  to  men.  And  the  very 
greatest  service  that  the  Bible  has  to  offer 
to  men  is  this  opportunity  of  sharing  in 
just  these  ways  in  the  wide  range  and  deep- 
going  significance  of  Christ's  life.  In 
158 


PERSONAL  ASSOCIATION 

Phillips  Brooks'  words :  "Surely  there  is  no 
more  beautiful  sight  to  see  in  all  this 
world — full  as  it  is  of  beautiful  adjust- 
ments and  mutual  ministrations — than  the 
growth  of  two  friends'  natures  who,  as  they 
grow  old  together,  are  always  fathoming 
with  newer  needs  deeper  depths  of  each 
other's  life,  and  opening  richer  veins  of 
one  another's  helpfulness.  And  this  best 
culture  of  personal  friendship  is  taken  up 
and  made  in  its  infinite  completion,  the 
gospel  method  of  the  progressive  saving  of 
the  soul  by  Christ." 


159 


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dresses and  sermons  is  their  practical  character.  .  .  . 
This  is  set  forth  very  emphatically  in  one  of  the  most 
remarkable  books  in  the  religious  literature  ...  a 
study  of  Christian  ethics  which  is  truly  inspiring." 
-Independent.  a^  $1JQ  nef> 


Jesus  Christ  and  the  Social  Question 

AN  EXAMINATION  OF  THE  TEACHING  OF  JESUS  IN  ITS 
RELATION  TO  SOME  PROBLEMS  OF  MODERN  SOCIAL 
LIFE 

Cloth,  12mo,  $150;  by  mail,  $1.61 

The  Religion  of  an  Educated  Man 

RELIGION  AS  EDUCATION  —  CHRIST'S  MESSAGE  TO 
THE  SCHOLAR  —  KNOWLEDGE  AND  SERVICE 

Cloth,  12mo,  $1.00  net;  by  mail,  $1.07 

The  Approach  to  the  Social  Question 

Just  ready 


BY  HENRY  S.  NASH 

Professor  of  New  Testament  Interpretation  in  the 
Episcopal  Theological  School  at  Cambridft 

Ethics  and  Revelation 

"This  is  a  great  book.  It  is  a  poem  in  prose,  a  study 
in  English — felicitous  and  forcible,  a  study  in  history 
and  sociology,  in  the  subjective  spiritual  life  and  in 
ecclesiastical  fundamentals.  .  .  .  Every  word  of  the 
six  lectures  should  be  read  by  thoughtful  men  of  the 
day,  ministers  and  laymen,  believers  and  sceptics." 
-JOHN  H.  VINCENT.  a^  $1JQ;  by  mailj  $161 


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